When managing large projects with many different types of documents involved, it is imperative that you have high control over which documents you send to whom, what they should do with these documents and by when this action should be done. You need to keep track of the documents you receive, what you should do with them and by when. Therefore, you need a well-organized system for controlling the flow of documents.
A document transmittal is a means by which the flow of documents in and out of the office (to and from the client, consultants and other involved parties), is controlled and documented.
Each document transmittal can be connected to a project (connecting to a project is optional but recommended as you lose some of the functionality without it) which should be first defined in IFS/Project. Each of these projects can be connected to document classes, a transmittal counter, transmittal status and receivers, in basic data. If connected to a document class, only documents within that class can be connected to document transmittals created for that particular project. Transmittal counters configure how the transmittal IDs are generated for the project. Transmittal line statuses are used to monitor each document in the transmittal (these statuses are separate from the normal status on a document revision). If receivers are defined, transmittals within the project can only be sent to those receivers.
After creating a transmittal, one or several documents can be connected to it and distributed to one or more recipients. A document can be connected to several document transmittals.
To perform all these activities at once in a fast and easy manner, use the Transmittal Assistant.
There are two types of (or directions for) transmittals: inbound and outbound. If user A and user B have IFS Document Management installed and if user A creates an outbound transmittal, attaches documents and sends it to user B, user B receives the documents and creates an inbound transmittal and attaches the documents to it. Thus both parties can track the activities surrounding the documents in question.
After a transmittal is received, a signed transmittal acknowledgement will be sent out from the receiver to the sender. This is a manual process where the user optionally adds the acknowledgement to send to his incoming transmittal, sends the acknowledgement (a signed document or maybe an e-mail) to the sender and executes a certain command to change the status. Next, the documents are reviewed and comment files are created and the document transmittal approvals and comments are sent.
Before you can send the document transmittal, the documents within the transmittal must be internally approved and released. You must have at least view access to the documents in the transmittal or the documents will be sent/downloaded without files. Documents can be sent as a hardcopy, by e-mail or shared on an FTP server. The distribution method selected here does not determine what the system will do but specifies how the sender intends to send the transmittal. The document transmittal report is created when the user selects to send the transmittal by e-mail at the last step of the wizard. The document transmittal status is updated. After a transmittal is sent out, a signed transmittal acknowledgement will be received from the receiver. If the acknowledgement is in electronic data format, this acknowledgement can be created as a document and connected to the outgoing document transmittal. As a result, the status of the transmittal will be updated. If not, you can manually change the status without adding an acknowledgement document. On the receiver side of an incoming transmittal, the receiver might attach the acknowledgement that he is sending back to the sender. Every time a transmittal is sent out, a transmittal updates its status and eventually, comments will be received. The comments should be reviewed, checked in, and the document transmittal status will be updated.
A transmittal can have one of the following statuses. Statuses make it possible to monitor the progress of the document transmittal.
| Status | Direction | Description |
| Preliminary | In/Out | A new transmittal automatically gets the Preliminary status. You can add documents to a transmittal in this status. |
| Sent | Out | A transmittal gets the Sent status when the user sends the transmittal using the wizard. When the transmittal is in Sent status, it is not possible to add more documents. However, acknowledgements can be added after sending the transmittal and comment files can be added after the document transmittal is set to Acknowledgement Received status. |
| Received | In | The Received status has to be set manually by the user after he has added the incoming documents to the transmittal. When the transmittal is in Received status, it is not possible to add more documents. However, acknowledgements can be added when the transmittal status is Received and comment files can be added after the document transmittal is set to Acknowledgement Sent status. |
| Acknowledgement Received | Out | The status is automatically set after the user attaches an acknowledgement file to a transmittal that was sent. If the acknowledgement is not in electronic format the user can manually set this status without attaching a document. |
| Acknowledgement Sent | In | The receiver of the inbound transmittal adds to the transmittal an acknowledgement file (using the Add Acknowledgement command) to be sent back to the sender. When this is done and the acknowledgement is sent back to the sender, the user sets this status manually using the Send Acknowledgement command. |
| Comments Sent | In | The receiver of the incoming transmittal will add comments, and after sending these comments back to the sender of the transmittal, he will manually set the status to Comments Sent. |
| Comments Received | Out | The status is set when the first comment file (there can be several comment files) has been received and added to a document in the transmittal. |
| Closed | In/Out | The status is set manually for both directions. |
All modifications and activities performed on a document transmittal are logged, with different log categories (for instance, document added, document removed, sent, received, metadata changed and so on.) This information can be used to recreate a document transmittal, if necessary (i.e. using the history the user can see, for a specific date, what the transmittal looked like.)
It is possible to print reports for documenting and following up the document transmittal process, at every step within the document transmittal process (from both the report archive and as right mouse button menu options within the client).