Alerts When a Document Changes
Ask to be told when a document changes. “The site licence has a new version” is a fact half a dozen people need and none of them own.
Where to find it
On a record, the Documents pane → Watch. Choose whether you want to hear about new versions, changes of state, or both.
E-mail, not a worklist task
A reminder is something to do and belongs in a tray that can be cleared. An alert is something to know. Filling somebody’s worklist with items they cannot complete would make the worklist useless, which is the more valuable of the two.
You are told only what you could have seen anyway
The important behaviour. Your access is checked when the alert is about to be sent, not when you subscribed.
Somebody who subscribed while they worked a case and has since been taken off it stops being told — and is not told that they have stopped, because “v4 of the Riverside settlement has been added” is itself a disclosure about a document they may no longer see.
Access coming back tells you what you missed
The subscription is not removed and its position is not advanced while you cannot read the document. Return from a secondment and you are told what changed while you were away, which is what anybody would expect.
Changes collapse
Three versions added between two runs of the housekeeping task produce one e-mail saying the document is now at v5, not three e-mails. For an alert that is the better trade.
It arrives when the task runs
Alerts are sent by the documents housekeeping task rather than the instant something changes, so they arrive on that schedule. The task ships switched off like every other.
A count, never a list
The panel tells you how many people are watching, not who. Who is interested in a document is a different and more sensitive question, and it is answered on the Sharing panel for administrators.
Worked example
Four managers watch the organisation’s lone-working policy. It is revised and approved; all four are e-mailed once. One of them moved department last month and no longer has a route to the policy — they are not e-mailed, and their subscription waits quietly in case they come back.
Recommendations
- Watch state changes on controlled documents and versions on working ones.
- Enable the documents task, or nothing is ever sent.
- Do not use it as a distribution list — acknowledgements do that properly.