Forwarding Proofs - should the recipient have to sign in?

Following

The "share this proof link with others" link has been a huge pain point for us. We haven't had anyone say they need to create a password when that link has been used. So I suspect we have something different in the Proof Settings than you have.

We have "Allow downloading the original file" and "Allow sharing proof via public URL or embed code"

But "Require Login," "Require decisions to be electronically signed," and "Allow subscribing to proof via public URL or embed code" are all unchecked for us.

The issues we run into is when that third party receives the proof, when they try to open it an email is sent to the proof owner -- which is typically a designer or web content author for us, unless the project manager has set themselves as the owner when they sent out the proof, some remember to do this, some don't.

The proof owner then has to approve that third party's access before they are able to open the proof. And the designers and authors typically ignore that email if they receive it, so the third party never gets approved.

Also whoever approves that third party's access really should move that person to the correct proof stage, they are defaulted to whatever the first stage is.

This delay has caused a lot of confusion, so generally the person who originally received the proof notification email just forwards that email to the third party. Which has it's own set of issues since whoever opens the proof from that email basically logs into the proof as the original email notification recipient and has whatever approval access that person had.

If you come up with something that works seamlessly for those third party reviewers, I'd love to hear about it.

For us, the reviewer who shared it out would need to make the comments and take ownership for the responses from the "team" they used, or it would be required each responsible reviewer have an account and be directly added to the routing (i.e., instead of the routing forwarded to them by some other reviewer).

We deal with a fair bit of artwork with regulatory and legal consequences so this kind of direct accountability and sign-off is absolutely necessary.

So basically, sharing links is not allowed by way of process.

The other aspect different about our setup is Workers (designers) do not start routings; Planners (project managers) own the routings and are gatekeepers/filters of comments received.

I was working on putting together an instruction sheet for our reviewers to step by step them through the approval process and I came in to this problem on step 1.

We were always assuming the reviewer could share the proof with whomever they needed since we all could but I tested it today as the reviewer and that is not the case. First I did not have the subscribe option checked so every time a proof was shared it asked for the new person to sign in and then would give them the error that the proof is unable to be subscribed to. I found where to check off the allow subscribe option but like you mentioned above now it sends a request for access to the proof owner before they can get in there to comment. This really isn't a very good option.

We have many requests entered by a department administrative assistant. We send the proofs to them for approval and they are the ones that let us know if its approved or not. BUT in almost all occasions they need to share the proof with their boss to get their feedback and approval. Am I right to assume the only options are.

1. admin asst shares the proof and the boss has to request access from the proof owner in order to comment
2. admin asst downloads the proof and emails to boss causing all comments to be outside of the proof program
3. admin asst shares the proof but the boss just looks at the pages and send their comments separately in an email

We are tying to roll this out to our entire property but none of these options seem like a great method for sharing these.

It would be nice if we could give the Admin Asst (Reviewer license) the ability to add someone to their stage and give them the proof level they would like OR even if the request for access went to the person that added them instead of back to the proof owner.

Has anyone found a better way?

I checked with one of project owners (one who would set the proof routing) and she does not have to approve access for a SME. I'm not sure what would be different in the settings. Subscription must be checked and the original recipient must share the proof with the email link, "share this proof with someone else".

Also might want to check the Subscription settings. "Subscriber must click a link in an email to access a proof" - we have this set to 'no emails'. Im not sure if that may be the culprit here.