How are Periodic Document Review tasks scheduled?

Periodic Document Review tasks are on a floating schedule. That means the system determines the review period from the periodic document review schedule and the next due date from the Last Reviewed Date for a specific document.

A scheduler runs periodically in the background of the system to check for any documents that require a periodic review based on:

the periodic review policy defined for the document type and
the "Last Reviewed Date" for the specific document

If the system identifies a document that requires a periodic review task, a task will be created at this time. Periodic document review tasks are automatically assigned to the document control coordinator if only one coordinator is defind. If multiple document control coordinators are defined, periodic document review tasks must be claimed by a coordinator.

The next periodic review task is not created when the previous periodic review task is signed off. In the extreme case, a document that is revised often may never reach Periodic Document Review.

How are Periodic Document Review policies Defined?

The Periodic Document Review policies are defined at the Document Type level. All documents of a specific type follow the same policy. The policies can be configured by a Document Control Module Administrator:

Click the Configure Document Control link in the navigation menu
Click the Configure Document Types
Review the settings in the Require Review Every # Months column
Click the Edit button for a Document Type to make change. Any changes made will only apply for future reviews.

Changing/adding a periodic review policy to a document:

As soon as you activate a Periodic Review policy for a Document Type, the system will scan documents of that type to determine if a Periodic Document Review task is required per the new schedule.

Example: if you change a two-year review to an annual review for a document type, the system will assess the Last Reviewed Date of every document of that type and create a Periodic Document Review task for any document where the Last Reviewed Date is more than a year ago.

So, on one hand, it's very easy to add/change a policy and immediately start completing reviews. However, it can also create a backlog of tasks. If you define a policy that hasn't really been followed until now, you may suddenly have hundreds of documents with Periodic Document Review tasks open (and quickly overdue). Prior to changing a periodic review policy it would be ideal to assess the potential impact. To alleviate the amount of initial work you could change one document type at a time (if you are adding/updating the policy for multiple document types).

How is the “Last Reviewed Date” field defined for a document?

This field is set at the following times:

When importing a document for the first time, you can set the initial value for the Last Reviewed Date as part of the import process
When creating or revising a document through the Change Request process, the Last Reviewed Date for the document is set to the date that the Change Request successfully passes Formal Review
When someone signs off a Periodic Document Review task for a document, they manually set the value for the Last Reviewed Date