Document Reminders
A date nobody is told about is not a deadline. Reviews, expiries and acknowledgements chase the people responsible.
Where to find it
Architect Panel → Automation & Tasks → Tasks:
- Document Review and Expiry — opens the clocks and expires what is due
- Obligations — fires the reminders and their escalations
Both tasks, or nothing happens
The single most common way this is switched on wrongly. One task opens a clock when a review falls due; the other is what actually escalates and sends. With only the first enabled, everything is tracked and nobody is told.
The first task’s preview says so in as many words when the second is disabled. Read it before arming anything.
Both channels, because either alone fails recognisably
A reminder raises a task in the owner’s worklist and sends an e-mail.
E-mail alone is filtered, missed, and invisible to anybody covering for somebody on leave. A worklist item alone is only seen by somebody who logs in and looks. Together they fail rarely, and they fail visibly.
Escalation steps, including one before the date
Steps are configured against the obligation type, in days relative to the due date — and a step may be negative, meaning before it. Expiry ships with a step thirty days ahead, because a certificate you are told about on the day it expires is a certificate that has expired.
Nobody to tell is reported, not swallowed
A document with a review date and no owner reaches its escalation with nowhere to send it. That is written to the log rather than quietly recorded as escalated — and it is exactly what the register’s Nobody owns these panel is for.
Recording the review closes the loop
The clock the sweep opened is met, and the next one opens from the cycle. Escalations stop because the thing was done, not because somebody dismissed them.
Test it before you trust it
Set a review date in the past on one document you own, run both tasks in preview, and read what they say they would do. Then enable them and confirm you get both the task and the e-mail.
Worked example
A policy’s twelve-month review falls due. The owner gets a worklist task and an e-mail; nothing happens for a fortnight; the escalation reaches the deputy. The review is recorded, the obligation closes, and the next date is set automatically twelve months out.
Recommendations
- Enable both tasks or neither.
- Preview first, on a real overdue document.
- Keep a step before the expiry date, not only on it.
- Fix unowned documents before turning reminders on, or the first run is mostly errors.