Authorium acts as a collaborative authoring tool and central repository for all of the documents required for the solicitation process. The Collaborative Document Manager, or CDM, helps teams take a structured approach to creating document based on configurable templates, divided into sections and subsections. Once created, documents can be integrated into project templates and workflow stages.
Topics in this section:
Document Templates
Adding a Document Management Stage to a Project
Adding Documents to a Project
Editing Documents
The Collaborative Document Management Stage is a dedicated stage within the project workflow that allows you to add documents to projects (using Document Templates) while managing permissions for your team members and version control.
Adding Document Management Stages to Project Templates gives you greater control over the organization of any related documents. These stages can help direct workflow and process improvements, making the workload more manageable for you and your team.
To add a Document Management Stage to a project template, start on the Configuration screen, then:
A template-driven approach to document building offers numerous advantages. Once a template is set up, it can be reused over multiple projects to save time going forward. While there is more initial investment in creating the template, it will make document work increasingly more efficient as time goes on as it is reused for other projects.
This article will ensure you are able to add a Document Management Stage to a Project Template, Create New Documents inside a project, and Organize Documents Within a Project’s Workflow Stage.
Document templates provide a standard structure and formatting for certain types of documents.
There are five types of Document Templates:
Collaborative Document Templates
Placeholder Document Templates
Copied Document Templates (taken from other project templates)
Global Document Templates (documents held at the organizational level)
Imported Document Templates (Microsoft Word files)
This article will focus on Collaborative Document Templates.
When you add document templates to a project template, any projects created from that project template will be pre-populated with documents created from those document templates.
To add documents to an existing Project Template, start from the Configuration screen.
You may remove documents from Document Packages via the three-dot menu beside the document in the document list view.
It is usually more effective to add document templates to project template rather than creating a specific document within a specific project. That way, your new document template can be carried over to all other projects that use the same type of document.
That said, there will be times, however, where you want to add a document directly to a project without updating the Project Template.
To add a collaborative document directly to a project, start by opening the desired project to the Project Workflow screen, then:
You may remove documents from Document Packages via the three-dot menu beside the document in the document list view.
Documents can be organized within their respective projects. To do so, starting from the Project Workflow screen:
Authorium’s document editing capabilities are similar to online word processors like Microsoft Word Online and Google Docs, but with the addition of a powerful template-based content management system created specifically for government administrative teams and much greater control over your team’s work processes.
By the end of this section, you will be able to navigate throughout the document editor, format and reorder document sections, use basic text formatting functions, and insert elements such as images tables.
Documents can be imported from text documents, or uploaded from storage on your computer.
To do so, starting from the Collaborative Document Management stage of a project or project template:
Documents in Authorium are made up of sections and subsections. Each section and subsection can be given its own title. A Table of Contents will be automatically created and updated as changes are made to document sections.
To add sections to a document, simply click Add Section within the document and give the new section a title.
To add a subsection, simply click on the three-dots beside the section status and select Add Subsection.
The Document Editor’s user interface (UI) is similar to that of a traditional word processors (with standard features like bolding or italicizing fonts, creating bulleted lists, etc)
Edits are made collaboratively, in real time: if a team member updates a document, their colleagues will see the changes instantly. If you want to review or approve changes before implementing them, you can turn on “Track Changes” in the document editor (under Tools). Suggested changes can then be individually accepted or rejected (which reverts the changed portion to its status prior to the suggestion).
You can also add comments to sections and subsections by placing your text cursor in the section you want to comment on, then going to Insert and selecting Comment. To ensure a specific person sees a comment, tag them in the comment by typing “@” plus their user name. This will send them a notification email to alert them that their input has been requested.
Only certain Project Member roles have permission to edit documents. These roles include:
Project Owner
Project Manager
Editor
A custom role with appropriate permissions
Document editing permissions can be limited in various ways to prevent unnecessary or unhelpful edits. For example, some users can be limited to only making suggestions which another user must review and accept. You can also limit users to only editing specific documents, or even specific sections of documents. You can even restrict certain roles to view-only or comment-only (e.g., contributor, external guests, reviewers, or viewers.)
This reduces confusion and redundancy during the review process.
To make changes to document editing permissions for project roles, see Adding & Editing Project Roles.
Authorium makes it easy to format and rearrange sections of a document. You can give sections specific titles and divide them into subsections, and any changes made will be automatically reflected in the Table of Contents.
If you need more space for text in your document, creating a new section will give your document more room. When you are finished working on a given section or subsection, consider locking it to prevent any additional changes.
Section statuses are a straightforward way to track the progress of individual document sections. This helps organize document work into actionable tasks. Only certain roles on a team will be able to alter the status of a section or document.
To lock / unlock a section, simply click on the three-dots beside the section status and select Lock / Unlock Section.
You can download any document (except for placeholders) by first locating the document in the document list view, then clicking the three-dot menu beside the document and selecting the Download option.
Documents can be downloaded in a variety of formats (PDF, word, etc.), with the exception of form fill documents, which can only be downloaded as PDFs. The download modal is ADA-compliant.
There are options to control whether the document’s title and sections should be hidden or shown when the document is downloaded, and sections can also be excluded from the download on an individual basis.