How to create a document approval workflow
How to build a document approval workflow that routes before it signs: classify the change, let the document type set its reviewers, and give an editorial revision a route that skips review.
A worked example, stage by stage
Classify before you route
An editorial revision leaves the workflow before anybody reads it. "New document or revision?" hands a revision to "Editorial or substantive change?", whose "Editorial" branch reaches "Log the editorial correction" — an exit two questions in, with the workflow deciding what it owes the document.
The review loop, drawn honestly
Classification gates the review: "Regulated document type?" adds quality and regulatory reviewers where a management system or a licence applies. Comments converge on one step, and "All review comments resolved?" hands the open ones to "Can the author resolve now?", whose "Yes" goes round again.
Approval, then the second name
Approval enters as two rows, one reading and one deciding — "Approver reviews the final draft" precedes "Approve for release?", and at this cut only its "Approved" exit has anywhere to go, reaching "Second approver required?", where "Obtain the second approval" adds a countersignature.
Publication has more than one ending
"Read-and-understood required?" decides whether release carries a training obligation, and the finished tree offers three published states alongside "Returned to the author for rework" and "Rejected and closed" — five outcomes the workflow can genuinely produce.
How it works
Build the routing table before the diagram
One row per document type, and two columns people will argue about: the reviewers that type makes mandatory, and the level of authority that may release it. Settle them there, where an argument costs an afternoon rather than a revision. The diagram that follows renders the table, so a type nobody agreed on becomes a route nobody follows.
Define editorial against substantive in writing
Editorial means a reader would do nothing differently: typography, layout, a renamed department, a corrected cross-reference. Everything else is substantive. Name who arbitrates a disputed classification, because the borderline cases — a changed tolerance figure, a reordered step list — are where the definition is worth having.
Make the routing questions the first rows
Type the classification questions into the top rows of the sheet and mark each one Decision in the Shape column. Because Line to holds row numbers, a route that skips the whole review block is just a number that jumps past it — the editorial exit is one figure, not a redrawn diagram.
Collapse review into one row, then order the signatures
Reviewers working simultaneously are one row: their comments arrive in parallel and converge on the author. Sequence approvals only where a later signature countersigns an earlier one, as "Obtain the second approval" does; the rest is habit rendered as a diagram. Branch words go in Line text against the numbers they carry, in that order.
Give every outcome its own terminator
Set Shape to Success where the document is published, Reject where it is refused, End where it goes back to the author. Three published states are not redundancy: published after full approval, published with training assigned, and a logged editorial update leave genuinely different obligations behind them.
Replay three logged revisions through it
Take the last three entries from the document control log and classify each using only the first three questions. If all three land on the same route, the classification is doing no work yet — either the definitions are drawn too broadly, or those three revisions really were alike. Widen the sample until one of them diverges.
Frequently asked questions
Who should approve a document, and who should only review it?
The approver is the process owner for that document, or whoever holds the delegated authority for its type — a single named person, never a role inbox. Reviewers are not chosen document by document either: the list belongs to the document type, which is what "Regulated document type?" settles in the example by adding quality and regulatory names to a route that would otherwise carry neither. Argue about the type once and you have decided every future revision of it.
Does every document revision need a full approval round?
No, and treating it that way is why review cycles run for weeks. A revision that changes no meaning — formatting, a renamed department, a corrected reference — needs a recorded editorial update, not a fresh round of signatures. Anything that changes what somebody must do takes the full route, including the reviewers its document type makes mandatory. What matters is that the test exists before the revision arrives, and that the author is not the only person applying it.
How many rounds of review should a document need?
One, and a second only where the first round found something substantive. What the workflow has to state is what happens when the second round does not close either, which is the job of "Can the author resolve now?": its "Yes" sends the comments round again, its "No" ends at "Returned to the author for rework" — a decision to stop reviewing a draft that was not ready rather than to keep circulating it. Rounds without a limit produce four reviewers' worth of comments and no owner.
What is a read-and-understood record for?
It is the evidence that the people doing the work know about the change — a separate question from whether the document was approved. Demand it where the revision alters what somebody must actually do in a regulated, safety-critical or customer-facing step, and it means something; demand it for every wording change and it is a click. Auditors look at the gap between a document's effective date and its acknowledgements, because that interval is when people were working to the old revision.