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Revisions

A published document is never edited in place. To change it you open a revision — a new round of the same document that keeps the same code, increments the revision number, and walks the lifecycle again from draft.

Both revisions exist side by side while the new one is being prepared. Only one of them is valid: the old revision stays valid until the new one publishes, and is deactivated automatically at that moment.

Two ways to open a revision​

PathWhoWhen to use it
Revision requestAny userThe standard path. Creates an approval gate that a controller must pass before the revision opens.
Direct revisionOwners and administratorsA bypass for people who already hold the authority, and for system integrations.

The revision request flow​

  1. Any user opens a revision request from the document view page and enters a request reason. The reason is mandatory.
  2. The system creates an approval task for the responsible identities — by default the document's owners, but this is configurable and your organization may have retargeted it to controllers or a fixed identity.
  3. The approver opens the request's own detail page and chooses Approve or Reject.
  4. On approval the new revision is created automatically in draft.
  5. The original requester — and only the requester — can cancel their own request while it is still pending.
caution

Only one revision request may be pending in a document's revision chain at a time. If somebody has already requested a revision and it has not been approved, rejected or cancelled, a second request is refused.

What carries over into a revision​

When a revision opens, the new draft is created as a copy of the published source:

  • All five inherited matrices — authorization, opinion, approval, distribution, controlled copy.
  • Owners, controllers and responsible organizations.
  • Form usage types, when the document is a form.
  • Attachments, only if the folder's attachments carried flag is on.
  • Language files — each carried over as its pristine uploaded source, with the baked file cleared. The new revision re-bakes its own placeholders when it publishes, so the revision number and approver names inside the content are the new ones.

Reference documents and the document code stay the same. The revision number increments.

Revision history​

The document's view page shows a read-only history of every revision request and cancellation request raised against it — who asked, why, and how it was resolved. This is visible while a request is still pending, so you can see that a change is already in motion before raising a second one.

When a referenced document is cancelled​

If a document you reference is cancelled, the system opens a system-initiated revision request against your document automatically. This is deliberate: a controlled document that points at a cancelled one needs a decision, and the request makes that decision visible instead of leaving a dangling reference.

tip

Write a real sentence in the request reason. It is the only field an approver has to judge whether the revision is justified, and it stays in the history permanently.