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Getting Started with Workgroups
Who is this article for?
Please Review Administrators managing roles.
Administration access will be required to follow this guide.
This article introduces Workgroups within the Please Review product. It introduces the distinct roles involved in Workgroups and how to use them effectively. This article won't show how to configure workgroups, see Further Reading for more information on this topic.
1. Introduction
Note: Workgroups are a logical way to separate several types of reviews.
A Please Review installation may have multiple Workgroups.
Each department may have a Workgroup, or there could be a Workgroup per client or per project.
A user exists only once in the system but can have separate roles in different Workgroups. For example, a user may be a Workgroup Administrator in one Workgroup, a Contributor in another and be limited to a Reviewer in further Workgroups. In such cases, users are only counted once for license purposes.
To review a document, a user must be a member of the Workgroup in which the review is taking place and included in the review as a participant.
Note: Care must be taken when considering Workgroup roles against review roles. To have a specific role in a review the user must have that role in the Workgroup otherwise the review role cannot be assigned.
Workgroup roles define the possible role the user can have in a review in the specific Workgroup and include:
- Author
- Reviewer
- Contributor
- Viewer
- Monitor
Review roles are the roles assigned to the review participant by the review Owner. In order to become a review Owner, the user must have ‘Author’ permissions in the Workgroup. The review Owner can then assign review roles to other participants based on their Workgroup privileges.
2. Workgroup roles
Dependent on the roles required within reviews, users should be assigned the relevant Workgroup role:
- Reviewer
- Contributor (includes Reviewer roles)
- Author (includes Reviewer roles)
- Author-Contributor
Additionally, Workgroup Administrator, Monitor and Managerial Delegation can be added to a Workgroup role:
| Role | Type | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Workgroup Administrator | This is an ancillary administration role. | Depending on the configuration settings, the Workgroup Administrator can set up Workgroup distribution lists, add users to the Workgroup and undertake Workgroup management such as transfer of review ownership. |
| Monitor | This is an ancillary oversight role. | Monitors may enter any review in their Workgroup(s) as a Viewer (i.e. with ‘read only’ access). This allows quality assurance or management oversight of the review process. |
| Delegator | This is a managerial delegation role set at a Workgroup level. | It allows the user to add one or more additional Reviewers into a review whilst remaining active in the review themselves. Note that this is separate from the standard ‘simple delegation’ which does not require any specific privileges. |
Note: Additional roles, which are variations of the standard ones, may be created by the System Administrator. For instance, it is possible to create a role with the ability to reply but not add new comments.
3. The monitor role
The monitor role is designed to permit quality assurance (QA) or management oversight of the review process and is Workgroup-based. Monitors may enter any review in their Workgroup(s) as a viewer. This is ‘read only’ access.
Note: Monitors are controlled by the System Administrator and will not appear on the review participant list.
- A monitor’s permissions are restricted to the Workgroup(s) in which they are included.
- There may be many monitors per Workgroup.
- Monitors may not be assigned to Taskgroups.
- Monitors will be able to automatically locate and monitor a review in a Taskgroup, if the review contains at least one participant from a Workgroup in which the monitor has permissions.
- Monitors will be able to oversee a review in a Taskgroup if it contains a monitored participant but will not be able to locate or monitor reviews in a Taskgroup which do not contain a monitored participant.
- It is possible for an individual user to be a standard user in one Workgroup and a monitor in another Workgroup.
- Monitors will be able to see the comments or changes made in an independent review.
3.1. There are two types of monitors:
- Monitors who are not able to review participants (i.e. not system users).
- Monitors who can be review participants (i.e. are system users).
These have the reviews to which they are invited in their inbox as normal. The review search will return all reviews which they are able to see including both reviews to which they are invited and reviews over which they have monitor rights.
4. Taskgroups
Taskgroups are a flexible implementation of the more rigid Workgroup model and are designed to allow users from multiple Workgroups to participate in the same review. Taskgroups are designed to be a self-maintaining temporary environment for cross Workgroup collaboration.