Review and Approval

The review and approval system allows users to collaboratively review, annotate, and approve image assets within the NetX application.

Creating a review

Any user within NetX can create a review project, regardless of user level. 

1. Choose the Review action from the selection bar action menu, an asset's detail page, or an asset's context menu.
2. Give your review a name in the Review field.
3. Click Save; you will be navigated directly to your new review

Adding to a review

When choosing the Review action from a single asset or selection of assets, you can add those assets to existing reviews rather than creating a new review. Note that a user must be at least a  contributor to the review to add assets.

1. Initiate a Review action from the selection bar action menu, an asset's detail page, or an asset's context menu. 
2. Browse the list of existing collections or type into the filter field to narrow the list of available collections.
3. Select the reviews you would like to add the asset(s) to. Multiple selections are possible.
4. Selected reviews will populate the Selected tab. 
5. De-select reviews with the x icon on the Selected tab, or un-check reviews from the Browse tab's list.

Participants

Roles

Roles are crucial to the workflow of the review system — they grant participants certain privileges which are unique to each review, and are not dependent on user level  (below administrators).

Manager

Managers can perform the following actions on a particular review project:

• Assign roles to each participant. 
• Determine which users are designated approvers for the project. 
• Edit the review's name.
• Toggle the active status for a project. Turning this off disables further editing and review for a project.
• Delete the review project entirely.
• Add and remove assets from an existing review project.
• View all assets included in the project under review, subject to user permissions.
• Annotate and comment on individual assets in a project.

Contributor

Contributors can perform the following actions on a particular review project:

• Add and remove assets for an existing review project.
• View all assets included in the project under review, subject to user permissions.
• Annotate and comment on individual assets in a project.

Viewer

Viewers can perform the following actions on a particular review project:

• View all assets included in the project, subject to user permissions.
• View any comments, annotations, or decisions made for the assets included in the project.

Managing participants

While creating a review, you can invite other NetX users to participate. Users with at least a  contributor role can edit these participants after the review has been created.  You can manage participants in the following ways: 

• In the master review list, use the action menu icon and select Participants.
• In the header of the review's asset list, select Participants from the floating action menu.
• While editing a review, click the Participants button at the foot of the edit window.

Note that only users with a manager role will be able to see and use this action. 

Add participants

1. Choose the new participant's role (viewer, contributor, manager).
2. Select a target for the new role – an individual user, a group, or all users in the system.
3. If your target is a user or a group, type the name of that target into the following line; once a target has been selected, a participant line will be added to the review. If you targeted all users in the system, click Add to add the participant line.
4. New participants will be notified of their new review automatically, but selecting Send message to participants will allow you to include an additional custom message to participants.
5. Click Done.

Edit participants

1. From the Participants window, use the drop-down lists that accompany each field to change a participant's role.
2. Click the action menu icon, then click Delete to remove the participant. 
3. Use the Approver toggle to determine whether the participant can make approval decisions. Note: only individual users can be approvers on a project.

Removing participants

Participants can be removed from a review while the review is still active. After a participant is removed, all comments and markups will still be available and other participants can still respond to existing threads.

Note: approval decisions will not be maintained and any decision made by the removed participant will be disregarded. This will also occur if a user is still part of a review, but their approval status has been removed. 

Accessing a review project

Review list

All reviews available to you can be accessed by clicking the Tools button along the lefthand navigational sidebar; select Reviews. Each review is listed with its title, creation date, number of included assets, number of participants, and the status of the review. Using the review's action menubutton, you can perform the following actions:

Edit: Edit the review's name, or edit the participants. This will change the name of the review for all participants.

Participants: Edits the list of participants

View review: Takes you to the list of assets in the review.

Delete review: Deletes the review; this will delete the review for all users.

Note: the availability of these actions is dependent on your user's role.

Asset list

The review project contains a list of assets included in the review, the asset's thumbnail and name, as well as actions to view or remove the asset from the review using the action menu icon. Only managers can remove assets from the review. Right-clicking an asset in the review reveals a context menu where you can make approval decisions, view the asset, or remove the asset from the review.

Header actions

The floating action menu contains review actions including:

Edit review: Allows a user with sufficient role privileges to edit the name of the review itself or manage participants. 

Participants: Users with sufficient privileges can edit the review participants. 

Select all: Select all assets in the review, enabling the selection bar.

Add "approved" to selection: Adds all approved assets to a selection.

Add "needs work" to selection: Adds assets with a status of needs work to a selection.

Add "rejected" to selection: Adds all rejected assets to a selection.

Context menu

All assets in the review have a right-click context menu, containing actions for that asset only.

Go to asset: Takes the user to the asset's detail page. 

Approve: Marks that asset as approved by the current user. 

Needs work: Marks that asset as needs work by the current user. 

Reject: Marks that asset as rejected by the current user.

Remove from review: Removes the selected asset from the review entirely. Assets may be re-added but any decisions or annotations will not be preserved.

Inaccessible assets

All assets in the review are subject to asset permissions. If a user is part of a review but does not have permission to one of its assets, a line item will still appear on the master asset list and the alert icon will appear in place of an asset's thumbnail while annotating the review. If you are encountering permissions issues while using shared reviews, contact your site's administrator.

Deleted assets

If an asset is deleted in NetX, it will be removed from the review list; all comments, decisions, and markups will be lost. 

Working with annotations

Once you have selected an asset for review, the annotations editor will launch. Below is a visual walkthrough of key features in the editor:

1. A preview of the asset under review. 
2. Mark your decision for the current asset using the Reject, Needs work, and Approve buttons. This choice is recorded in the Decisions tab in the righthand pane.
3. Annotation tools for highlighting, commenting, and pinning elements of the asset.
4. There are two tabs in this pane: Annotations and Decisions. Annotations displays all comment threads linked to annotations made for the image. The Decisions tan displays all current approval decisions made for the current image, along with the user who marked the decision. 
5. A zoom slider.
6. A gallery of all images in the review. Access assets by scrolling this gallery horizontally.  Assets that have been marked with at least one approval decision show an Approved icon, a Needs work icon, or Rejected icon.
7. Exit review takes you back to the main Reviews tab.

Using the annotation tools

Use annotation tools to highlight areas of an image by marking an entire area or using pins to mark exact points for review. Any markup you add will begin a comment thread for participants to discuss the highlighted or pinned areas. All comments appear in the Annotations tab in the righthand pane.

Highlighting

Highlighting tools allow you to mark an entire area of an image for review:

• Adjust the color and opacity of the outside stroke lines of the highlighted area. This can be edited after a particular highlight has been placed.
• Adjust the color and opacity of the inner highlighted area. This can be edited after a particular highlight has been placed.
• Choose whether the highlighted shape will be a circular or rectangular shape. This cannot be edited once a particular highlight has been placed.

To add a highlight, drag your cursor across the image preview. To move a highlighted portion, use the pointer tool located above the shape and pin tools. 

Pins

Pins are useful tools to mark a precise element of an image for comment or review. To add a pin, select the pin tool and place; a comment box will appear, allowing you to make a note for your other reviewers.

Comments and replies

Each time an asset is highlighted or pinned, comment boxes populate letting users make a note regarding their annotation. Users can create comment threads with the reply option; the full thread will be shown when the original comment is selected. Participants can delete their own comments with the Delete button.

Approval decisions

Any reviewer with approval privileges can make one of three decisions: Approve, Needs work, and Reject. To apply a decision to an asset under review, click the decision buttons along the top-right of the review window. Depending on the decisions of other users, this may change the overlaid icon to one of three options: Reject, Needs work, and Approve.

Closing a review project

To close all voting and commentary on a review project, use the Status toggle on the master review list. You must be a manager for the review to perform this action. Once a review is closed, participants can still view all assets, decisions, highlights, pins, and commentary in the review. Annotations, decisions, and comment threads will no longer be editable. You can re-activate the review project using the same toggle.

Email notifications

By default, all participants in a review project are notified via email when the following changes occur:

• Participants are added to a review project.
• Assets are added to a review project.
• A decision is made on an asset.
• Comments are made on an asset.
• The review project is edited, such as the title of the project.
• The review project status is changed.

Participants can edit the frequency of these emails, or opt-out altogether by changing their Review  updates option in User > Settings.

Advanced settings

The following properties govern whether the review and approval feature is available on your instance, as well as the threshold for asset approval during the review process.

review.approval.requireAll

review.enabled