Controlled documents overview
Controlled Documents is where you govern SOPs, work instructions, and policies through a quality-managed lifecycle: draft, review, approval with an electronic signature, distribution, acknowledgement, and retirement. Every state change is recorded so an auditor can see who did what, when, and why.
Administrators (Quality Admin, HR Admin, Corporate Admin). Reading and acknowledging effective documents is open to every user; the authoring, approval, and retirement actions are role-gated.
What a controlled document is
A controlled document is a single governed record with a version history. Two kinds exist, and the system treats them the same way for the lifecycle:
- Content documents are authored in Better Comply as Markdown, using the built-in editor. The body is stored and versioned inside the system.
- File documents are uploaded binaries (Word, PDF). The original file is stored, indexed for AI search, and versioned by uploading new revisions.
You can also turn a Word or PDF file into an editable content document with the AI import flow. See Import a Word or PDF.
Each document carries a human-readable document code (for example SOP-QA-001) alongside its internal identifier. The code is what your physical SOPs and external references cite; the internal identifier is what the audit trail records. See Creating documents for how to set it.
The lifecycle states
Every controlled document moves through this sequence:
draft -> in_review -> approved -> effective -> superseded
-> obsolete
| State | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Draft | Being authored or edited. Not visible to learners. |
| In review | Submitted for approval and waiting on a Quality Admin. |
| Approved | Signed off, but not yet released. |
| Effective | The current, released version. This is what learners see and acknowledge. |
| Superseded | A newer version became effective, so this one is now historical. |
| Obsolete | Retired. Do not use. Kept for the historical record only. |
When you publish a new version, the previously effective version is automatically marked superseded so there is never more than one effective version at a time. See Lifecycle and approval for who can perform each transition.
Submitting, approving, making effective, and marking obsolete are all written to the audit trail. Approval and obsoletion require an electronic signature. These records are append-only and cannot be edited or deleted. See the Compliance area for the full audit-readiness model.
Two badges: lifecycle is primary, indexing is secondary
A document shows up to two badges, and they mean different things:
- The lifecycle badge (Draft, In review, Approved, Effective, Superseded, Obsolete) is the primary signal. It tells you whether the document is the live, approved record. This is the badge auditors and learners care about.
- The indexing badge (Indexing, Indexed, Index failed) is secondary and smaller. It reflects only the AI search pipeline that makes the document findable by the assistant. It says nothing about whether the document is valid or approved.
The indexing badge appears only when it is transient or has failed. A healthy, indexed document shows just its lifecycle badge. If indexing stalls or fails, you can retry it from the document list without affecting the lifecycle state.
A document can be Effective (the approved, live record) while its indexing badge still says Indexing. The two are independent. Never read an indexing state as a document-validity state.
What you can do here
| Task | Page |
|---|---|
| Author a Markdown document and set its code | Creating documents |
| Turn a Word or PDF into an editable document | Import a Word or PDF |
| Submit, approve with a signature, make effective, mark obsolete | Lifecycle and approval |
| Ask staff to read and confirm a document | Acknowledgements |
| Upload a revision, read or compare past versions | Versions and history |
| See which trainings depend on a document | Used by trainings |
| Delete a document, or learn why deletion is blocked | Deleting documents |