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Environmental & Risk Management / Compliance Management / Business Process Owner - Compliance
Environmental & Risk Management / Environmental Health & Safety / EH&S - Background Data
Environmental & Risk Management / Emergency Preparedness/ Business Process Owner

Defining Document Categories and Types

Compliance officers, emergency managers, and safety managers need to track, organize, and manage a large volume of many different types of documents related to compliance and safety initiatives. This is required primarily to successfully pass regulatory audits, prepare for emergencies, and to reduce liability risk from lack of documentation in the event of litigation due to an accident or health-related incident where compliance comes into question.

You store documents by associating them with individual records that you enter as components of your compliance programs or safety programs. By assigning these documents a category and a type, you can track the type of document being uploaded for easy and fast retrieval in the future. Having documents classified by their category and type enables you to locate documents associated with a single record by searching on these document criteria. It also enables you to restrict a drill-down selection list of Document Folders to show only folders having documents of the category and type you enter in the Filter console.

The following are examples of Document Categories and Types:

• Document Categories. Categories may include policies, procedures, permits, licenses, audit forms, violations, test results, tech specs, user manuals, service manuals, invoices, certifications, and inspection results.
• Document Types. Within the categories, you may wish to further refine the classification of documents by using a two-level system: document category and type.

  For example:

  • Permits and licenses could be a category, with types of building, equipment, construction, occupancy, hazard, discharge, elevator, etc.
  • Violations could be a category with types of expired permit, code, documentation, reporting.
  • Policy and Procedure may be a category with types of regulatory, internal, ISO.

To create a document category:

1. In the Process Navigator, select the Define Document Categories and Types task.
2. Click Add New, and select Document Category from the submenu.
3. In the entry form on the right, enter a category name and optional summary and description. The value that you enter for Summary will display in the selection tree on the left and also appear to users when they are looking for a document. In the Description field, you can enter more detailed information about this category.
4. Click Save. In the left pane, the system displays the new document category.

To create document type for a document category:

1. Create document categories per the above procedure.
2. On the Process Navigator, choose the Define Document Categories and Types task.
3. Select the category to which you want to add a document type.
4. Click Add New, and select Document Type from the submenu.
5. In the entry form, the system displays the selected Document Category. Create a new document type for this category by completing the Document Type field. Optionally, enter a summary (which will appear in the right pane and helps identify this type to users when selecting this type for a document). In the Description field, you can enter more detailed information about this category.
6. Click Save.