escalation on approvals (using Documentum)

["Melissa Clark" <melissa -dot- s -dot- clark -at- gmail -dot- com>]

Hi,
This question is for the Documentum users out there.  I currently use
Documentum Webtop for doc approvals.  My workflows involve both sequential
and parallel approvers with no more than a total of 4 sequential "tasks",
each task has multiple parallel approvers.  While some (quick!) approvers
only take 1-2 days to approve, what often occurs is that in the first set of
approvers, one (or sometimes more) approver(s) takes over a week (and there
are still other people who need to approve after that person).  This causes
the entire doc approval process to take 2 or 3 weeks, not to mention that
any received comments would still need to be reviewed and the doc processed
for release!



For this reason, we would like to escalate documents that are not approved
after x number of days.  I understand that, in general, late approvals are
pretty commonplace in technical communications; however, this is an attempt
to limit the number of days approvers consume and adequately escalate when
the need arises.   I would like to at least add a statement to the
notification message(s) that says something to the effect of:   Escalation
will occur if approval is not received after x days from the start of this
ECN.

But...How do you define "the start of this ECN" when approvers receive it at
different times (depending upon which "task" they are in)? How do you keep
the approval process from taking weeks in terms of each approver set
thinking they have x number of days multiplied by 4 tasks?   It might
be "fair" to divide up the number of approver tasks by the number of days so
that each approver gets an equal amount of time to review and approve a
document that is sometimes several hundred pages--but it is not realistic.
Is anyone else using escalation in Documentum (automated or manual) for doc
approvals and if so, how?  How do you allow enough time for
sequential/parallel approvers to adequately review and approve a document?



Please also send email to me directly since I am on digest.  Thanks in
advance for any help!



Melissa
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