Assigning Document Owners

Ownership of project documents determines a team member's rights to upload and publish new versions. Ownership of a deliverable or activity can be either explicit (an owner is specifically assigned) or implicit (ownership is inherited when an explicit owner is not assigned) and can be assigned in the following ways:

• Automatically through Function assignment - users assigned to a function on the project team are automatically assigned to every document, gate, or workflow action in current or future stages, where the combination of function and owner matches the function/owner project team assignment. More...

  For example, selecting the first user for the function Purchasing Agent in the Project Team section of the Team page assigns that user to every document whose function is set to Purchasing Agent that currently does not have an owner assigned. Similarly, replacing user Jane Doe with user Jane Smith as the user assigned to the Purchasing Agent function assigns that user to every document that has Jane Doe set as the owner and Purchasing Agent set as the function.

  However, if the combination of function and owner is not the same on the document, gate, or workflow action as assigned for the function on the project team, changing the user on the Team page does not change the owner on the object.

• Manually through individual document assignment - the project's assigned project manager and Process Managers with Manage Process rights can assign individual deliverables and activities to different owners, overriding the automatic assignment that comes from the function assignment. More...

  If collaborative deliverables are enabled, team members can assign themselves as the owner of an unowned deliverable or activity that has been set to allow shared ownership and can collaborate with one another in completing the activities for the deliverable.

• Through implicit ownership - if a deliverable or activity does not have an owner as defined above, it always has an implicit owner. Implicit ownership is intended to ensure that deliverables and activities always have an owner, and so a team leader does not have to assign themselves as an owner to change an unowned document. More...

  Implicit ownership applies when a user is not specifically assigned as the owner and is determined as follows:

  • If an activity has no owner, the Deliverable Owner owns the activity.
  • If a deliverable has no assigned owner, the Project Manager owns the deliverable and can add new versions of deliverables in their project that do not have an assigned owner.
  • If a project has no assigned Project Manager, the Process Manager (or Idea Manager for Idea projects) with Manage Process rights within the project's access group, has project manager rights to the project. Therefore, the Process Manager owns the deliverable. As soon as a project has an assigned Project Manager, the Process Manager no longer has implicit rights.

To view a list of all the assignments for a team member in a project, click the Team page. Click next to the team member's name to view their assignment, gatekeeper, and workflow action details.

To manually assign an owner to a project document:

1. Display the project in which you want to assign a document owner.
2. Click the Stage in the model graphic to display the project stage that contains the deliverable.

If you are assigning an owner to an activity, expand the deliverable to display its activities.

3. In the Owner column for the deliverable or activity, select a member of the project team.

Depending on how the deliverable or activity is configured in the model, ownership of a deliverable or activity may be restricted to users with a specific user role or to users assigned the function set for the deliverable or activity.

4. Click Apply to save your changes.

You can also set a deliverable or activity owner from the deliverable or activity details.

Collaborative Document Ownership

If the document is set as collaborative, team members can assign and unassign themselves as the owner. This allows different team members to work on the same deliverable or activity in turn. The Allow Team Members to Share Assignments system parameter enables and disables collaborative documents. The availability of the Allow shared ownership check box within the Deliverable/Activity Details is dependent on the deliverable and activity display configuration. See Defining Deliverable and Activity Details Display Options.

You can assign owners to a collaborative deliverable just as with non-collaborative deliverables. The difference is that owners can unassign themselves and allow other team members to become the owner.

To enable collaboration on a document:

1. Display the project in which you want to assign a document owner.
2. Click Stage in the model graphic to display the project stage that contains the deliverable.

If you are assigning an owner to an activity, expand the deliverable to display its activities.

3. Click the deliverable or activity name that you want to make collaborative.
4. In the Contents tree, click More Details to display additional details about the deliverable or activity.
5. Select the Allow shared ownership check box.
6. Click Apply to save your changes.

Notes:    If a document contains a report created with Accolade Office Extensions, do not assign a Restricted Team Member as the owner. That user role does not have rights to refresh this kind of report in the document. If a user is deleted or deactivated in Accolade, they are removed from the project team; however, they remain listed as the owner of any the documents in the project. To reassign ownership of their document assignments, see Assigning Document Owners. For reporting and record keeping purposes, deleted or deactivated users remain as the recorded owner for documents that have a Completed status.