Introduction 

Documents are everywhere!
Every team, every department, every person relies on them. From engineering to quality, procurement to marketing, documents are part of the job. And even in our digital, automated, process-driven world, they haven’t gone away—they’re still at the heart of how we work, collaborate, and make decisions.

But not all documents are created and treated equally:
Some are informal, created for a quick reference or internal discussion, and can be updated, shared, or replaced with minimal oversight.

Others, are controlled documents – they are typically documents that define processes and procedures and are subject to revision control, ensuring only the latest approved revision is available for usage. Examples include company policies, operating procedures, quality manuals and more. 

Because of their role in ensuring compliance, standardization, and quality across the organization, controlled documents require a formal review and approval process, controlled distribution and modification.

ENOVIA solution 

ENOVIA offers the 'Quality Document Author (QUC)' role - an enterprise-wide, collaborative solution for controlled documents.

In this blog, we’ll explore how this role supports the formal approval and release process of controlled documents.

Approval process

In the case of controlled documents, a formal approval process is always mandatory in order to be able to promote them to the ‘Approved’ state.

ENOVIA supports two robust methods for managing approvals:

• Approval Routes
• Change Actions (CAs)

Both methods enable structured reviews and formal sign-offs. 

Before R2025xFD04 release, the approval method was strictly tied to the ‘Change Required’ setting. This setting is available in the 'Change' tab of the Controlled Document’s 'Information Panel':

Based on this setting, the relevant method could then be selected, as follows:

Since R2025xFD04 release, the approval method no longer relies on the ‘Change Required’ setting. You can choose any method you like, and when you add a Controlled Document to a Change Action, the setting is automatically switched ON.

This enhancement provides more flexibility and saves time in the approval process.

The following video illustrates the approval process using an Approval Route:

The following video illustrates the approval process using a Change Action:

Note:

As part of the approval process, a signature is crucial—especially for companies in regulated industries.
ENOVIA provides the capability to implement Electronic Signature as part of the approval process, which is legally equivalent to a handwritten signature.
The Electronic Signature is not implemented by default, but can be configured in the ‘Collaborative Spaces Configuration Center’ application.
For more information, please refer to the following blog:
'Electronic Signatures (ESIGN) for Task approval process'

Release process

The approval itself is not enough, you must also define when the document becomes effective! This is done by releasing the document, which means making it officially effective and available for use.

The release timing is controlled by the Effectivity Date setting.
This setting is available in the 'Document Effectivity' tab of the Controlled Document’s Information Panel. it is defined by two key elements:

• Effectivity Type:

  • Effective On Date means the document becomes effective starting from the specified date —not earlier.
  • Effective By Date offers more flexibility: The document may become effective on the specified date or earlier.

   

• Implementation Period options: determine when the effectivity date will occur:
  • Manually set a specific date, or
  • Define a number of days after approval

The following examples illustrate how the Effectivity Date is calculated:

Example#1:

• The Approval Date is July 1st - this is the date when the Controlled Document was promoted to the 'Approved' state.
• The Effectivity Date is July 14th - according to the setting

Because the Effectivity Type is Effective On, the document can be released on July 14th and not earlier.

Example#2:

• The Approval Date is July 1st - this is the date when the Controlled Document was promoted to the 'Approved' state.
• The Effectivity Date is July 11th - which is 10 days after the approval date (according to the setting)

Since the Effectivity type is Effective By, the document can be released any time between July 1st (the approval date) and July 11th (the Effectivity Date)

The following video illustrates how to set the Effectivity date and Release the Controlled Document: