State User Field

The State user field is a visual representation of the status of your document. It does so by traffic-light style colour signals that indicate how close the Rev Status is to the date of configured “Completed” status/es.

For example if you configure the Rev Status – “Approved” to indicate that the document is completed/closed, then based on the date user field the colour signals will change as it draws closer to the date specified. Once the document status is changed to “Approved” the colour signal will changed to the completed colour.

These colour signals will show in Publication Space register when the State User Field column is enabled as well as in the 'Details' tab in document preview.

This user field works only when there is a custom date user field enabled e.g. submission date, due date etc. If this user field does not already exist you may create it by clicking Add Custom Field in Publication Space settings. Examples are: 'Due date' 'Forecast close date' 'Completion date' 'Approval date' 'Submission date' etc.

Step 1 : Go to Publication Space -> Settings -> Click 'Add Custom Field' button.

Note: Before you click ‘Add Custom Field’ it is worth checking if the State user field already exists in the project by clicking on the Show Excluded and Show Retired buttons. If it exists you can restore or enable it.

If it does not exist continue to Step 2 to create it.

Step 2 : Select State from the Select Type drop down list.

Step 3 : Give the user field a code such as STATE and description such as State.

Step 4 : In ‘Configure Options', click 'Check the date is based on' menu and select the custom date user field you would like this document to be closed/completed by. In this example we call it 'Forecast Date’

When uploading document in Publication Space, this date user field will need to be filled in, in order to calculate the due date and for colour signals to work. In this example, user will need to fill in Forecast Date while uploading the document.

Step 5 : 'Determine the result based on' will show the indicated documents State using either of two logic options:

'Matching any of the following statuses' will mark document as completed/closed if Document's Rev Status matches the 'Select statuses'. For example, 'Approved' is selected status, then documents that do not have Rev Status of Approved will appear with colour signal such as Warning
'Not Matching any of the following statuses' will not mark document as completed/closed if Document's Rev Status matches the 'Select statuses'
‘Select statuses’ will indicate which status should be matching (or not matching) in order to show the signal.

In this example, we are selecting ‘Not Matching any of the following statuses’ so the document is not marked Completed until it is Approved.

Step 6 : 'Configure Statuses' is where you configure the colour signals that will show the State of a document in the Publication space register:

Blank Date - signals that the date user field assigned in Step 3 is not filled. Used for documents that do not require a date of completion (for example if you are uploading already Approved documents)

Neutral - signal for when the document has not reached the period assigned for warning

Warning - signal for when the document has reached the period assigned for warning

Warning period : can be assigned by entering the number of days. This is the number of days before due date is reached.

Late* - signal for when the document is past it's due date

Completed Late - signal for when the document was closed past it's due date

Completed - signal for when it's rev status is complete/closed before Late period

*If you upload a document on due date (i.e. date that it is required) - it may show up with the Late colour signal

(Note: all colours are configurable as well as the number of days preceding the deadline (completed) date.)

Once configured, this is how to view it :

Step 1: Once configuration is complete, you will start seeing a colour signal when documents are uploaded (given that custom date user field (Forecast Date in this example) is filled in :

Step 2 : Click the edit columns button in document register and ensure State user field is shown

You will now see colour coding in your Publication space preview screen and in Details tab when viewing the document: