Working with External Collaboration Checklists

The QMS External Response Collaboration feature allows you to send a request for external contacts to complete a checklist. If enabled by an Admin, you can use checklists to capture detailed responses in conjunction with related business processes, such as onboarding new supplier and supplier risk management personnel.

How to Send Checklists to External Collaborators

To send a checklist to an external contact:

  1. Navigate to the applicable object tab.
  2. Click Create.
  3. If applicable, select an object type from the drop-down and click Continue.
  4. Select the appropriate external contact from the External Collaborator field.
  5. Complete any remaining required or optional fields as necessary.
  6. Click Save.
  7. On the new object record you just created, select the chevron icon and move the record to the lifecycle state configured to start the checklist.

Once the record is moved to the appropriate lifecycle state, the external contact receives a Welcome Collaborator email with a link to log into Vault and access the checklist.

If configured by your Admin, external contacts can share checklists with additional external respondents. Clicking the Invite Respondents button at the top of Audit, Organization, and Qualification checklists provides a link that can be shared with other external contacts, who can view the checklist and enter responses. The link is disabled after the checklist is completed.

How to Reassign Checklists to External Collaborators

You can reassign a checklist to another external collaborator from the parent object record. Completed checklists cannot be reassigned.

To reassign a checklist to a different external contact:

  1. Navigate to the relevant object tab.
  2. Select the parent object record for the checklist.
  3. Execute the Reassign External Collaborator user action, and select the appropriate external contact to reassign the checklist to.

Upon successful checklist reassignment, the new external contact assigned to the checklist receives an email notification.

How to Review a Checklist

If configured in your Vault, you can perform a review and leave follow-up questions on a checklist after an external contact has provided their responses. The external contact must then respond to all follow-up questions before the checklist can move into a Completed state.

This functionality is supported for the checklists initiated from the following object records:

  • Audit
  • Organization
  • Qualification

To review a checklist:

  1. Navigate to the checklist from the parent object record.
  2. Under a response, click the +Follow-up button.
  3. Enter your follow-up question.
  4. Click Save.
  5. Repeat for all responses that require follow-ups.
  6. When you are finished adding follow-up questions, click Review. Vault displays a summary of all follow-ups.
  7. When you are finished reviewing the summary, click Complete. Vault prompts you for a verdict. You can indicate that follow-up responses are needed, or mark the checklist as complete.

If follow-up is required, the external contact receives a follow-up task to provide their responses. Once the external contact has provided responses to your follow-up questions, you can leave additional follow-up questions on those responses. You can repeat this process until all questions have been sufficiently answered, at which point you can provide a verdict on the review task assigned to you indicating that no further follow-ups are required, which moves the checklist into a Completed state.