In order to help facilitate training needs and document control needs, Dispatch's Documents and Skills can be revisioned. Adding a new Document revision or Skill revision allows you to stage a new revision before publishing it.
Creating a new Document Revision through the Web Interface
Select a Document from the Document List screen. Click the "Create Revision" button at the bottom of the screen. You will then be able to choose which type of Document to add: File, Checklist, or Link. If you upload a new file and click "Upload file", or if you create a new link and click "Save", you will then be taken to this page:
This page allows you to add a descriptoin to the revision changes, publish the document, and update the associated Skills, if any. There are three "Actions" you can take with associated skills: No action, Create New Revision, Include in Revision. The following sections explain what each of these options does.
Add a revision for a Document, no associated Skills
If your document is not part of a Skill revision, you can simply add a document revision and publish.
Add a revision for a Document, don't update current skill revision
If your document has associated Skills, and you do not want to update the Skill, choose "No Action" when publishing the Document. The Skill will keep the document, but will not change the Document revision for that Skill.
Add a revision for a Document, include in current skill revision
If you need to update a Document, and you need the document to be updated on the Skill, but you don't need to create a new Skill revision, choose "Include in Revision" when publishing the Document. This will associate the new Document Revision with the current Skill revision. This is helpful when a document has a grammatical error or moves location.
Add a revision for a Document, create a new skill revision
If you need to update a Document and create a new Skill revision in a single step, choose "Create New Revision" when publishing a document. You can then select a new "Effective Start Date" for the new Skill revision. This will automatically add a new revision for the associated Skill. This will expire all User Skills and will allow them to re-acknowledge training.
Add a Skill revision, include current revision of all Documents
It is common to handle Document revisions and Skill revisions independently. Often Documents are updated and published multiple times before a Skill is revised. When you add a new revision from the Skill Details page, the resulting Skill revision will have the latest published revision for all associated documents.
Creating a new Document Revision through the API, and publishing through the Web Interface:
Documents can be added and published through the API, but it will not update the associated Skills. You can, however, use the Web Interface to publish Documents that were added through the API to update its associated Skills. Simply open the Document screen, and click "View Document History" link in the "Revision Changes" section. Select a revision from the list, and click "Publish." You will then be presented with a screen to update the associated Skills. Refer to the sections above for a detailed description of the "Actions" that you can take.
Note: Document Publish Date:
The document Published date provides an easy way to identify when a document revision was published. Often this data is necessary when documents are audited. The Published date is available on the document screen and the document revision screen. Here are some important details about the published date:
- The Published date will show the most recent date the document was published. If a document revision is published more than once, it will only show the most recent date the revision was published.
- If the document was published before the Published date was added to the Document Center, "Unknown" will be displayed for the Published date. If the document has not been revised since it was published, the Updated date is the date the document was published.
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