# Working with Document Review & Approval External Collaborators

QualityDocs includes a feature set to streamline temporary, short-term access to your Vault for external parties to review and approve documents on behalf of their company. You can give your organization's users the ability to send review and approval tasks to recognized external contacts who can then complete those tasks in Vault with minimal or no need to manage user account provisioning for those external parties.

When an authorized internal Vault user sends a review or approval workflow task to an external contact, Vault utilizes an external license and automates the provisioning of the _External User_ account. A specialized email message invites the external contact to login to Vault to complete the assigned task. Vault then automatically inactivates the user account when the task has been completed and when the document reaches its [_Steady State_](/en/lr/14560/).


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      <p><strong>Note</strong>: This feature set is not intended to replace long-term or regular day-to-day interaction with external parties within your Vault and is intended for those external parties who require infrequent access to Vault. This feature only supports <em>Document Review</em> and <em>Document Approval</em> tasks. External Collaboration for document approval must be <a href="/en/lr/65819/">configured by an Admin</a> before use.</p>
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## Defining External Collaborators

On applicable Vault documents, you can identify an assignee/collaborator from an external organization by selecting their _Person_ record in the _External Collaborator_ field. This field may be constrained to only _Persons_ within the _Organization_ involved in the process. Up to five _Person_ records can be selected as external collaborators for each document review and each document approval workflow.

### Contact Lists

If [configured by an Admin](/en/lr/65819/), you can define _Persons_ related to an _Organization_ record by creating a list of recognized external contacts at that organization who may be sent document review and/or approval tasks. This is defined by adding _Person_ records to the relevant section of the Organization record.

## User Account Provisioning Automation

When sending document review and approval tasks to an External person, Vault can invite the person from your Vault automatically at specific lifecycle states within the applicable lifecycle. Upon a task being sent to an External Collaborator, Vault can automatically detect if the _Person_ identified in the _External Collaborator_ field has a user account in your Vault.

If Vault detects that the _Person_ does not have a user account, the system creates an _External User_ licensed user. If Vault detects that the _Person_ already has a user account, it activates their existing user. Next, Vault grants access for their user account to the assigned document by adding membership to the _External Collaborators_ application role, as needed.

When the External Collaborator has completed all assigned tasks and when the document(s) have reached their _Steady State_, Vault automatically deactivates that user account.