@Barbara Sedlack -- yes, that's somewhat correct -- the way we work right now our Designers end up being the "proof owners." Here is how it works for us. (we are a marketing/creative services department in a financial company, so we have a lot of checks and balances) Each piece we create is a separate project. Within the project are all the tasks that we have to go through in order to get that piece to distribution. (I know there was a separate discussion in the Global Discussions area where someone said that it was not worth setting up tasks but for us we use a project template as the process manual for how a piece is created and distributed, and it keeps our 20 PMs in sync with each other so that everyone is doing the all the things in the same way) The tasks all follow the same basic pattern, in a waterfall methodology ( creation leads to review leads to distribution ) with obviously some re-work paths built in. Our projects are on average about 40 tasks -- we have a lot of review tasks and it helps to see these as tasks because then they add to the project duration and are reportable so we can see trends. The PMs are the project owners, but as well, they are one of the major workers in their projects, as they are in charge of managing the review process for their piece. The Designer would have a Design task that is a predecessor to the PM's Review task. The PM's review task is the predecessor for other tasks, so the project cannot proceed until this review task is done. If a piece requires change, many PMs prefer to put in additional revision tasks (again, this helps make obstacles that increase the project duration more visible). The PMs can and often do use their Review task to loop in other reviewers as doc approvers. As they add the reviewer to the Document Approvals line on the file, the PM is the person who will get the notifications that say when the reviewer has approved or rejected. This lets them have the instant notification they need, as well as vet any requested changes before they send it back to the Designers as another revision task. Other ways they get the notification they need is to assign the reviewer on a predecessor task to the task that they are assigned to. As soon as that predecessor review task is done, they know they can start their part. You will often see a task called "Compliance Review" followed by a task called "Consolidate Review" (the compliance reviewers have a review task duration of 5 days and the PM can review all changes before sending back to Design). PS: not that you asked, but here is a list of people who need to review each piece. Writer, email manager (for emails), Creative Director (for design), PM, Sales or Product or Business team, Compliance (if a piece reaches customers), Legal (if specific things are mentioned), Partner, and final proofreader. I'm sure it looks crazy from the outside, but the law in the US is very specific where financial matters are concerned. :) -skye
