A clean ACC approval-workflow setup that auto-files approved docs into your Published folder

[josebaqueror]

Sharing a setup for the ACC Docs Reviews tool that removes a lot of manual filing and keeps your approval status auditable. This is all done by a project admin under the Reviews tool > Settings > approval workflows.

The pieces that make it work:

1. Pick the template that matches your real chain. One Step Approval is a single approver; Two/Three Step add review steps before the approval; the Group Approval templates let a whole discipline review together (you can require all key reviewers or a minimum number). Do not overbuild it, most document approvals are fine as One or Two Step.

2. Set the initiators, reviewers and approvers by ROLE or COMPANY, not by named person. If you assign individuals, the workflow breaks every time someone leaves. Assign to a role and new members of that role can initiate or review immediately, with no workflow editing all project long.

3. Use Action Upon Completion to auto-copy approved files to your Published (or Shared) folder. Turn on "Copy approved files", choose "when all files in the review have been approved", and pick the target folder. That is what makes the WIP to Published move automatic instead of someone dragging files around. The target has to sit under the same top-level folder (you cannot copy between Plans and Project Files).

4. If your target folder is naming-standard enforced, the Status and Revision attributes are added automatically, and you can turn on Auto-increment so the revision bumps itself on each approval. Turn on "Required by approver" for the status attribute so nothing gets published without a status set.

5. Customize the statuses. Approved and Rejected are the defaults, but you can add "Approved with comments" and give the statuses their own labels and icons so the Review status column in the Files tool tells the real story at a glance.

One heads-up given the recent Reviews service change: if you still have very old reviews open from before the service update, they no longer progress, so close them out and re-submit those file versions as a package under the new workflow rather than waiting on them.

Curious how others structure the reviewer step: role-based like this, or do you still assign named approvers for the final sign-off?

[atighe84]

Hi @josebaqueror 

We’d follow similar workflows to what you have detailed here with multiple review templates set up for various review workflows using single step, multi-linear step, and linear with a group step workflows implemented that are role and company based assigned, approved files being copied into the ‘Approved’ folder without published markups included, and we encourage each reviewer in a multi-step review workflow to add as much information in the comments box upon completion of their step so that the reviewer in the next step understands the scope of the previous step, and ensures the tracking and activity of the review is detailed upon closure of the review.

The only additional feature we utilise for our review templates that are multi-step is that we activate the ‘Roll back to initiator’ option to enable multiple rounds to be captured within the same review I.D if a review step finds something wrong during the review. This ensures it can be sent back to the initiator and not have to be moved onto the approver to reject it, for it to be then put back through another review again with the changes updated. 

Just to add to your comments on the reviews service change that occurred recently. With the latest announcement of upcoming Forma releases, Project Admins will soon be able to find and batch archive affected reviews that can no longer progress. See recent updates announced in the link below;

https://www.autodesk.com/blogs/construction/july-autodesk-forma-construction-releases-built-for-what...

Regards,

Andrew