Loading Draft Documents
To load draft documents or comments from a document onto Chorus, you will need to have the correct permissions to do so. If you are the committee chair you will automatically have the right to do this. Other committee member types will have to be granted permissions to do this. If you have permission to do so you will see the option to import/upload documents alongside your project listing.
There are two ways to get documents into the system:
- Importing from other systems (such as the Public Enquiry Service); or
-
loading them manually by supplying a file from your hard drive.
If you choose to import documents from another system, you will be given some options for files available from other systems that have been set-up to share content with Chrous. You should then select to import a particular document and the systems will exchange the information needed to import the document being offered. Once the document has been imported, you will be given the option to review the imported document and to make it live for other committee members to see.
If you choose to use the manual import option, you will be asked for some information about the document you want to load (note: you do not have to upload a document to handle comments about it [but the context helps a lot]).
An uploaded document may be a Word file, enabling comments to be displayed inline with corresponding sections of the document for review, or a PDF. A document may also be created with no source file when one is not available.
- Navigate to the Projects page by clicking the Projects button at the left hand side of the page header. This page displays a list of projects and their associated documents, grouped by committee
- Locate the project to which you wish to upload a new document. If you are a member of a large number of committees, you may find it helpful to use the filter at the left side of the page to filter the projects and documents by committee.
- Click the Load document button to the right of the project identifier. You will be taken to the Load Document page. There are two options on this page: to check external sources for documents available for import; or, to load a new document manually.
- Select the Load manually option.
- The manual document loading form will now be displayed. The form has the following fields:
- Identifier (mandatory) – The document identifier.
- Title (mandatory) – The title of the document.
- Type – The type of document, for example proposal or DPC – this is selected from a list which is specified in the system configuration file.
- Source (mandatory) – The originating standards body for this document. The source information will be used by the system to decide how to deal with the placement of figure captions, which varies between standards bodies.
- End date (mandatory) – The date at which the comment resolution period will finish. On this date, a notification email is sent to committee members who have chosen to be notified of closing reviews, informing them that the review period has ended. The system does not automatically change the status of the document on this date – this should be done manually by a committee administrator.
- New comments allowed – If this box is selected, then users with the ‘Create comment’ capability will be able to create new comments on the document. This setting does not affect uploading comments from a file.
- Comment text editable – If this box is selected, then users with the ‘Edit comment’ capability will be able to edit the text of comments as well as the comment metadata.
- Status – The status of the document, which defaults to live. The status of a document determines which users it is visible to, and whether it appears by default on the Projects page.
- Source document (optional) – Select a Word document or PDF file to be uploaded as a source document. This should be a copy of the document for review.
Once you are happy with the data you have entered, you can select a file to upload. The file will need to be in Word format, preferably formatted according to standard styles, but this is not essential. Select the file from your system to upload and submit the data. This will result in the file being sent to the system and processed, which may take some time. Once this is done, you will be asked if you want to view the file. It is a good idea to do this immediately to ensure that it has loaded correctly.