Publish a controlled document

The Documents tab on Safety is the controlled register: one row per document, each carrying a stack of revisions. A revision is editable while it is a draft and immutable once approved. Publishing one supersedes the previous revision, withdraws its outstanding acknowledgements and fans new ones out to the audience.

Screenshot pending

Navigate to Safety > Documents signed in as a user holding Manage safety. Capture the full tab: the five-tile readout band (Documents, Drafts, Awaiting Review, In Force, Source Update), the Register rail on the left with several documents in mixed states, and the Document detail pane on the right showing a selected effective document with its Kind, Audience, Latest revision, In force and Last updated facts and the action row. Needs at least one draft, one awaiting review, one effective and one document showing the Source update available pill.

Before you start

Creating, editing, publishing, importing and removing all need the Manage safety permission. Approving a submitted revision needs the Review safety documents permission instead, plus a saved signature — see The review inbox.

The tab itself appears if you hold either permission. Holding only Review safety documents gives you a read-only register with no New document button.

Steps

1. Choose the reviewer, if there will be one

   In the Document pane header, pick a name from the Reviewer select. It applies to whatever you create or submit next, not to the document currently selected. The select is hidden in Solo operating mode.

2. Press New document

   In the Register pane header. The Create controlled document dialog explains the deal: “The content remains editable until submitted. Approval creates an immutable revision.”

3. Fill in the document

   Title and Revision summary are both required, and so is at least one of Instruction or bulletin (the typed body) or Controlled file (a PDF, DOC or DOCX up to 50 MB). Set the Kind and the Audience. Tick Critical acknowledgement if an unacknowledged copy should block a flight.

4. Save it

   The footer button reads Create and submit when you picked a reviewer, and Save draft when you did not. Either way the first revision is created and labelled Draft 1.

5. Submit the draft for review

   Select the document and press Submit for review. The revision moves to Awaiting review and lands in the reviewer’s queue at /reviews. In Solo mode this button reads Issue now instead and does the whole job in one press — see Options.

6. Make the approved revision effective

   Once the reviewer approves, the button reads Make effective. Press it. This is the moment the document comes into force and acknowledgements go out.

Options

The six document kinds

Set on creation and shown in full in the detail pane, abbreviated in the register rail.

Kind	In the register	Use it for
Operations Manual Volume 1	OM Vol 1	The manual the PDRA-01 readiness check looks for
Operations Manual Volume 2	OM Vol 2	The second volume
Safety notice	Notice	A company instruction. Can be critical
Safety bulletin	Bulletin	Awareness material. Can be critical. What a promoted SkyWise alert becomes
Procedure	Procedure	A standing procedure
Other controlled document	Other	Anything else that needs revision control

Only Safety notice and Safety bulletin can block a flight through the critical-notice readiness check, and only when they are also marked critical.

Audience, equipment scope and the critical flag

Audience decides who is assigned an acknowledgement when a revision goes effective. The create dialog and the register use slightly different wording for the same four values: All active pilots / All pilots, All active members / All members, Selected teams, Named people / Named users. Choosing Selected teams or Named people makes the matching picker required — you cannot save without at least one selection.

Applicable aircraft or equipment is a separate, optional scope. It does not change who is assigned the acknowledgement. It narrows which jobs a critical notice blocks: a scoped notice blocks only a job whose assigned equipment includes one of the listed items. Leave it empty and the notice applies to every job.

Critical acknowledgement is the flag that gives a notice teeth. The dialog states the consequence: “Unacknowledged revisions can block an affected flight release.” A critical notice appears with a Critical acknowledgement pill in the detail pane and a megaphone icon in the register.

Solo self-issue

When the organisation’s operating mode is Solo, the draft action button reads Issue now rather than Submit for review, and one press submits, approves and publishes in a single transaction.

It requires all three of: the Manage safety permission, the Review safety documents permission, and an operating mode of Solo. It still requires a valid saved signature — being the only person in the organisation does not remove the need to sign what you issue. The review request is marked as self-issued so the trail does not imply a second person reviewed it, and the audit entry is written at warning severity with the summary “Controlled document revision self-issued under solo operation”.

The success toast reads “Notice issued and sent for acknowledgement”.

Import existing Operations Manuals

If your Operations Manuals were uploaded before the controlled register existed, the readiness check reports them as Confirm to proceed, not missing — a manual in the legacy store exists and is readable. Press Import OM in the Document pane header to bring them in as controlled revisions. The toast reports how many were created. Imported revisions carry the summary “Imported from the legacy Operations Manual store”.

Find things in the register

The readout band above the register is the lifecycle read as counts, and each tile narrows the rail to that stage: Documents (all), Drafts, Awaiting Review, In Force, and Source Update. Press a tile again to clear the filter.

Source Update collects documents whose upstream source has published a newer revision since this one was imported. Those rows carry a Source update available pill and a warning triangle in the rail. It is a prompt to create a new revision, not an automatic update — nothing is changed for you.

Remove a document

Press Remove. The confirmation is explicit that nothing is destroyed: “This removes the document from active lists. Its revisions, acknowledgements, approvals and audit history are retained as compliance evidence.” Confirm with Remove document. Any outstanding acknowledgements are withdrawn with the reason “Controlled document archived”.

What happens next

A revision moves through six states. The register shows the latest revision’s state on every row; the detail pane shows both the Latest revision and what is In force.

State	Shown as	Entered by	What it triggers
draft	Draft	Creating a document, or New revision on an effective one	Nothing. This is the only state in which content and files can be edited
awaiting_review	Awaiting review	Submit for review	A review request in the reviewer queue, and a notification to the reviewer
approved	Approved	The reviewer approving in the review inbox	The revision becomes immutable. It is not yet in force
effective	Effective	Make effective, or Issue now in Solo mode	Supersedes the outgoing revision, withdraws its outstanding acknowledgements, assigns new ones to the audience, and sets distribution to in progress
superseded	Superseded	A newer revision becoming effective	Its outstanding acknowledgements are withdrawn. The record is retained
withdrawn	Withdrawn	Nothing in the product moves a revision into this state today	Reserved in the revision vocabulary

Publishing is the same code path however the approval was reached, so Make effective and Solo Issue now produce identical side effects and an identical audit trail apart from the self-issued marker.

Troubleshooting

The Submit for review button does nothing useful and an error appears. A revision must have either typed content or an attached file before it can be submitted or issued. The server rejects it as CONTROLLED_DOCUMENT_CONTENT_OR_FILE_REQUIRED, which has no bespoke user copy — you will see the generic “Check your input” / “That request wasn’t valid. Please check the details and try again.” Add a body or attach a file.

Make effective is refused. The usual cause is an effective date in the future — a revision cannot be pre-dated into force. That one has no bespoke copy, so you get the generic “Check your input”. If instead the revision is not in Approved state, the message is “Couldn’t complete that” / “That conflicts with something that already exists.” — though Make effective only renders on an approved revision, so you should rarely meet it.

New revision is refused. A document can hold only one draft at a time. Publish or discard the existing draft first.

You cannot edit an approved revision. That is the point — approval creates an immutable revision. Create a new revision instead; it starts as a copy of the latest content and file.

A member is not seeing the notice. Check the Audience on the detail pane. Equipment scope does not affect assignment, only which jobs a critical notice blocks.