How do you manage late proofs? Looking for best practices.

[ChrisJackson]

We have a lot of proofs where someone assigned didn't do their part, so technically the proof never gets completed, becomes late and clutters up our Workfront. Ideally, people would do their part, but I'm not holding my breath. So I usually instruct the proof owner to change the role to "read only" for the users who didn't do their part. Is there a better way to handle these proofs that are done, but still hanging around?

[Richard_Le_ · Accepted solution]

Hi Chris,

In regards to dealing with old (now redundant) proofs, your suggestion of changing the role to read only is one option. Some other options you have are to update the proof so that the person who gave the approval (assuming someone did!) is the primary decision maker, therefore providing an overall decision on the proof. Or you could remove the person(s) that did not provide a decision from the proof altogether. Any of these options should complete the review process, it just depends on what your preferences are. Whichever option, I would always add a comment against the document outlining what was done and why so that there is a record of why the reviewers were removed / changed for audit trail.

However my advice to anyone experiencing an issue like this is to try and identify and address the root cause in order to prevent this from happening in the first place. i appreciate that this is often easier said than done(!), but getting to the bottom of why this is happening will prevent you from having to run around clearing up old proofs in the future. Some questions that I would ask are:

• Do the users know how to reiew proofs and provide a decision? Is additional training needed?
• Are the proofs relevant to the decision makers that were selected? From your post, it sounds like the document has progressed anyway without all approvals?
• Are the outstanding proof decisions visible enough to them (do they need a report / dashboard building in order to better visualise what is needed from them)?
• Do you need more than one approval on a proof? (i.e. if a user sees that someone else has already approved, do they think that their approval is no longer needed). You can configure the proof so that only one decision is required and not several, if needed.

I hope this helps!

Best Regards,

Rich.

[ChrisJackson]

Thanks Richard! I appreciate the very detailed feedback. I'm wondering if an even simpler process of clearing the queue would be to have our Proof Owners archive the proofs once they've gotten the feedback they need. Any thoughts on archiving?

[Richard_Le_]

No problem Chris.

Archiving the proof doesn't remove the outstanding approval. The document / proof and outstaning decision still exists within the system. So if you were to look at the document in the documents tab it would still show that a decision had not been reached. The proof would also still show up in a proof approval report, or as a document with an outstanding proof approval on a document report . . . . even if it had been archived.

What archiving the proof will do, however, is remove it from a users and proof approval requesters work list, so it will no longer appear as a work item in the My Work area.

Best Regards,

Rich

[ChrisJackson]

Thanks again Richard! That's very helpful.