How to organize Jira Document Management Workflow?

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How much time do your employees spend looking for specific information? Document management is one of the most time-consuming processes. You can lose up to 21,3% of productivity while organizing your docs. That’s why it’s crucial to decide what tools you’re going to use. Jira workflow is a highly flexible tool to build your document process management here. 

What is a document management workflow?

Customer service, human resources, accounting and invoicing – each process requires proper document recording, keeping and utilizing. If everything is set up smoothly, it’s less likely your staff will get frustrated or unproductive. That’s where management steps in.

Document management workflow is the process every successful business needs to collect, store, categorize, exchange or delete information.

Let’s take human resource management, for instance. New employees come, you collect information about skills and experience, some personal data. You can create an employee profile to record all that info. Additionally, you need to document each team member's goals and achievements along the work cycle and conduct a performance review. And finally, you should organize documents for the offboarding process. From your side, you need to supply employees with essential docs for their responsibilities, coordination, and so on – lots of stuff to do. 

Some companies still have a paper-based system of document management, some use electronic records. Here we will step forward to optimize your workflow and grow results. 

Elements of a DMS Workflow

A document management system (DMS) aims to reduce paper use while organizing document workflow. It consists of several components:

• creating, editing and archiving a new document
• document versioning
• collaborating and exchanging documents
• development of reporting
• incorporating a search function

Document workflow software comes in various forms and levels of sophistication, but they are useful for businesses of all sizes and shapes. You just need to find the best for your organization. Let’s figure out how Jira users can optimize their document management workflow.

Document Management Workflow in Jira: Why do you need it?

If you use Atlassian Jira as your project management system, it’s better to integrate your document management here as well. So, your team will always have access to the required docs without leaving the instance. 

What happens if the whole document management process is organized in different places without DMS?

An example:

You have some financial request → Fill in the requisition order form → Send it to the department manager → Wait for approval → Send it to the finance department → Wait for approval again → Send for the final decision from the CEO

Looks like a routine process and you need to wait almost an eternity until everything is settled. If you do it manually, you just wait for your request to be transferred from one office to another. Too looong?

In Jira, you can organize your document workflow according to the process stages. Create a Jira board with appropriate statuses. For example, you can create a separate project for financial requests. Statuses will be: to do, under manager review, under Fin dep review, under CEO review, to be paid, done.

Your request will be transferred from one status to another until it’s done. Also, there is an option to attach documents to every Jira issue.

How can Business Process Manager help?

Imagine you can automate and speed up the whole process of document management workflow. That would mean you fill in the request form without additional actions from your side. It’s automatically forwarded to the next person who will get the notification about the approval required. 

Business Process Manager (BPM) app is developed for this aim: to automate Jira workflow and reduce the time for recurring tasks. Organizing your documents is just one of the numerous examples. Nevertheless, who wouldn’t like to save 21,3% of productivity? Each company definitely has more important tasks than bureaucratic red tape.

Simplify Jira document management workflow with BPM:

• Create a form for the document type you need

Forms inside the application help to store information internally in Jira and standardize processes. You can use typical form elements: Text field, Action Item, Dropdown, Multichoice, Checkbox, Attachment, etc.

• Set the Approval Step to select a specific person to approve some action or document.

You can choose one or several users. Every person will get the form according to the order you set. You will receive an email and Jira notifications when a user selects Approve or Reject.

• Configure the due date not to miss deadlines

You can set a specific date or dynamic date that is based on how many days pass after the trigger is chosen.

• Add the Blocker 

For example, you can add a blocker for the Approval Step, and no task will be started until the required users approve what is needed.

Takeaway

Document management can save you time and money if done wisely. You can build a single source of information and create a document management workflow in Jira. With BPM, you can go further and automate a document management workflow. Try it, and you’ll find more cases to use.