Document Prerequisites and Dependencies

As a quality-control measure, firms may want to prevent users from working on certain documents until other documents have been completed. For example, a firm may want to ensure that documents key to the planning phase are completed before documents from the performing phase are started. Users can also specify the dependencies for a document. Dependencies prevent any further changes from being made to a document once another document has been signed off by a specified role. Therefore, once the document has been signed off, none of the sub-documents that are dependencies can be modified.

The firm can specify the consequences of not meeting the prerequisites including:

• No consequences – an information icon is displayed to advise users that document dependencies exist, but users can still continue to work on the document.
• Warning - warning text (customizable by the firm author) will pop up in a dialog upon opening, along with what documents needs to be completed prior to working on the current document.
• Lock document - the user cannot work on the document unless a password is entered or the dependent document has been completed.