Procedures

A procedure writes down how a recurring piece of work is done, such as the monthly bank reconciliation or booking the library's meeting room, so that someone other than the person who usually does it can do it. Procedures live in the library.

Writing a procedure

Researchers, editors and project leads (and owners) choose Library → New procedure and fill in:

• Title and Purpose: what it is and why it matters.
• Owner: the member who answers for it.
• Delegate: who does it when the owner cannot.
• How often: such as "Monthly, first week".
• Approval above: the amount, Currency and the role (Approved by) above which the work needs someone's sign-off.
• Steps: in order. Each step has what to do and, optionally, how to do it and a link.

A new procedure is a draft. Choose Publish to make its steps the version members run. To change the steps later, choose Publish new steps and say What changed. Every published version is kept; runs record which version they followed.

Retire a procedure the organization no longer follows. Retired procedures stay readable but cannot be run, and they no longer count in the documented figure.

Documented

A procedure is documented when it is published and has an owner, a delegate, at least one written step and an approval threshold. The library shows a Documented or Not documented badge on each procedure and, for the latter, what is missing. The library's Procedures documented figure is the documented share of all procedures that are not retired.

Running a procedure

Any member can run a published procedure, whatever their role:

1. Open it from the library and choose Run this procedure.
2. Tick each step as you finish it. Your progress is saved, so you can come back to the run later.
3. When every step is ticked, choose Finish. To stop early, choose Stop without finishing.

A run records who ran which version, when, and when each step was done. Only the person who started a run can change it, and a finished run cannot be changed. The procedure's page lists its recent runs. Runs by anyone other than the owner count towards the library's Runs by someone other than the owner figure: the measure of whether the organization, not one person, can do the work.

What a procedure does not do

Running a procedure does not approve or pay for anything. When a step involves money, the approval goes through Approvals, and the procedure's approval threshold tells you when that is needed.