I think this has been suggested before, but the issue is becoming a thorn in our sides as we use Collaborator more and more. I would like to see a separate “Close Review” button. There shoul...
I agree that it's often not clear but I think this whole thing needs to be given some thought. Collaborator does not close the review until (among other things) the last approving role approves the review. The moderator or any other privileged role does not have special powers to close the review, so probably there is usually only one person with an 'approving' role assigned to the review. I personally think it is a good idea for the tool to enforce the configured process / rules, otherwise we have found with other tools that it is too easy to just add the record & close by the moderator without any real review effort, reducing the tool's effectiveness / value.
What I think would greatly help is for the tool to better explain what will happen when they click the Send to Completed/Inspection and Waiting buttons.
For example, if the user is an author/moderator, and they click "Send to Completed", the tool should explain things like:
- "You are the last approving role, and all defects have been fixed, so the review will now be closed"
- "You have approved the review, but the review will remain open until User XYZ approves"
- "You have approved the review, but the review will remain open until all defects have been resolved"
BTW there is a setting that allows reviews to automatically reopen if someone enters a new comment after the review has been closed, so that you don't have to go in & reopen the review yourself. Of course that has its own drawbacks, but we have given guidance to our user community indicating that the author should not approve the review until they have given sufficient time for optional participants to review & provide comments, and that no longer seems to be a big issue for our company.
That also brings something to mind - optional / non-approving participants only ever get the "Waiting" button and can never approve. So in the context of this request, it would be nice for say an author/moderator to see that optional participants have reviewed & have no comments - so maybe allow them to approve even though they didn't have to.
Maybe instead of having three buttons - send to approved/send to completed/waiting, there should be only ONE button at the bottom - "I'm Finished". When the user clicks that, they are given options (with explanations), such as:
- I approve the review and do not want to re-approve when changes are made
- I want the author to make changes to the document before I approve the review
- etc.