SmartDMS
// Getting started

The SmartDMS Guide

Everything from your first upload to approval chains and plain-English search — in thirteen short chapters.

// Chapter 07

Approvals & tasks

Everything that needs a human decision lands on the Reviews page. Documents are grouped one card each, while every reason for review keeps its own decision.

Read the review queue

A document can have more than one reason to be reviewed. Its card keeps those reasons together without merging their decisions. Source badges tell you whether an item came from an anomaly, an approval rule, or a workflow; a manual assignment shows who assigned it.

  • Unassigned — any approver can act means the item is available to anyone with approval permission.
  • A named assignment is intended for that person. An admin or owner can also decide an item assigned to someone else.
  • Each task keeps its own pending or decided state even when several appear on the same document card. A decision also records a resolution on the document's linked anomaly findings, when present.

Make a decision

  1. Read the review reasons

    Start with every reason listed on the document card so you know which decision you are making.

  2. Decide one review reason

    Approve is a one-click action. Reject opens a confirmation where you can add an optional reason before choosing Confirm reject.

  3. Continue until the card is clear

    If another independent reason remains, decide it separately. You need the Approve / Review permission to act.

Why a review appears

Approval rules. Admins configure these under Settings → Configuration → Approval Rules. A rule can apply always or look for low confidence, an amount above a threshold, an approaching expiration, or a missing signature. The first matching rule adds one review task; it never changes the document's folder, filing, or ready status.

Anomaly flags. SmartDMS checks extracted documents for conditions such as possible duplicate invoices, invoice and purchase order mismatches, vendor banking changes, expired or expiring documents, and explicit signature or notarization failures on supported types such as lien waivers and change orders. A flag adds a banner to the document and an unassigned task that any approver can act on. Approving or rejecting the task records that resolution on the linked anomalies.

Workflow approvals. A workflow can route a document to a named approver or leave it unassigned. An ordered sign-off chain starts with stage one and creates the next stage only after the current one is approved. A rejection ends the chain. If a configured approver is no longer valid when a stage is created, that stage becomes unassigned instead of being skipped.

Ordered sign-offIllustrative demo
Approval chain — each approval creates the next stage; the chain completes only after the final decision.
Review notifications are intentionally consolidated: email items are collected into a digest, and Slack sends one Review needed summary per document processing run instead of a separate alert for every source. A manual assignment made through the API is the exception and sends its own assignment email.