How to Review and Contribute to a Submission for Committee Steps

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We have outlined the user experience for committee chair and committee member in this article because the end user experience varies for each. Remember that this article is intended to be a general guide, so if you are unsure about your review or why you have been included in a review process, we recommend contacting your Faculty Success Administrator for guidance on what is expected based on your institution's standards and policies.

Email Notifications:

When email settings are configured at the committee review step, both the committee chair and members will receive a notification when a candidate's submission reaches their inbox for review. Based on the frequency of reminder emails, if enabled, both the committee chair and members will receive reminders until they submit their review, the submission is moved to the next step by the chair or through the automatically advance feature. Committee chairs will submit their review by submitting the formal committee response and send the submission to the next step in the process, while members would mark that they reviewed the candidate's submission. 

If email settings are not configured at the committee step, the committee chair and members will not receive notifications for tasks awaiting their review. For details on configuring email settings, see Configuring Custom Email Settings.

Committee Member Experience

First, we will discuss the user experience as a committee member. To see the user experience of a committee chair, proceed to the next section of this article here. 

Accessing a Submission 

Visit this article for information on how to access a submission.

Contributing to a Submission 

When you access the workflow submission, you will be presented with a read-only view of the faculty submission as well as any other prior review steps to which you have access. The candidate's full name will appear at the top of the submission, and if the joint appointment type "Each appointment receives a separate step" is enabled for the candidate's submission, you will also see the unit for which you will be submitting your review at the top.

You will also notice two sections "My Response" and "This Committee Response." The "My Response" section is where you will provide your review while the "This Committee Response" is intended to be completed by the committee chair as such the fields under this section cannot be edited. 

Submitting to a Submission 

As a committee member, you'll find two options in the Actions menu, which is accessible by clicking on the "Actions" button in the upper right corner. The first option, "Save Draft," allows you to save a draft of your review. The second option varies depending on the configuration of the workflow template created by your Workflow Administrator, and it could be one of the following: 

• Publish my response: If there are fields for you to fill out in the workflow process, you'll have the choice to publish your response to the committee or chair within the actions menu. If member visibility is enabled, you'll see the option to publish your response to the committee. If member visibility is disabled, you'll have the option to publish to the chair. 
• Mark as Reviewed: When there are no fields for you to fill out, you can mark that you have reviewed the candidate's submission by selecting "Mark as Reviewed" for the committee or chair. If member visibility is enabled, you'll see the option to mark as reviewed for the committee. If member visibility is disabled, you'll be able to select the option to mark as reviewed for the chair. 

Monitoring a Submission 

A submission can be monitored from the Submission Table, but if you have not been granted access to the Submission Table by your Workflow Administrator you can monitor a submission that you have contributed to through the Workflow utility's History table.

When the Joint Appointment type "Each appointment receives a separate step" is enabled and the submission has not reached a consolidation step, committee members will see two items in both the CURRENT STEP and DUE DATE columns that will display the current process each of the candidate's appointments are in.

If Member Visibility is disabled, the Committee Member will only be able to view their own published response under the section "My Response", and their published response will only be visible to the committee chair.

If your Workflow Administrator has enabled Member Visibility, committee members will see the section "My Response" change to "Committee Members and Responses" after publishing their own response. This section will allow the committee member to view other committee members published responses by switching between the two tabs By Member and By Response:

• The By Member tab shows committee member’s full response individually. 
  
  
• The By Response tab shows responses aggregated by field on the Member Form. 
  

Committee Chair Experience

Sections of the Submission

When committee chairs access faculty submissions for review, they will first see a read-only view of the materials submitted by previous participants based on how the Workflow Administrator configured the form's security. The candidate's full name will appear at the top of the submission, and if the joint appointment type "Each appointment receives a separate step" is enabled for the candidate's submission, you will also see the unit for which you will be submitting your review at the top.

The section “Committee Members and Responses”, presents a list of committee members, along with an indication of which committee members have reviewed the submission, and when they last reviewed.

If the committee step has a Member Form in place so that committee members can share their reflections digitally while the step is pending, the chair will see any responses published by committee members in this section. The chair can review the submitted responses just as other committee members can, using the By Member and By Response views, and can share his or her own personal response to committee through his or her own Member Form (available through their personal row in the Committee Members and Responses section), but the chair is not required to submit a personal response in order to view the responses of other committee members.

The last section the committee member sees is the Chair Form, under the header “This Committee’s Response”. Through this section the chair will draft the committee’s formal response to the submission. A committee chair can save a draft of “This Committee’s Response” to make it available for committee members to see from their view. Once the response is finalized, the chair can submit the response to the next step.

Options for Actions

The committee chair can also save their progress by selecting "Save Draft" and if member visibility is enabled by the Workflow Administrator, the chair will be able to publish their response to the committee by selecting "Publish My Response to Committee" if they wish.

Should revisions be required prior to the committee starting their review, the committee chair has the option within the Actions menu to send back the submission to the previous step, and once the committee is ready to complete their review, the chair can select to submit the submission to the next step of the process. The next step could be the immediate subsequent step in the process, or the chair may have the option to submit the submission to another step if branching options were configured for them to utilize by the Workflow Administrator.  

Monitoring a Submission 

A submission can be monitored from the Submission Table, but if you have not been granted access to the Submission Table by your Workflow Administrator you can monitor a submission that you have contributed to through the Workflow utility's History table.

When the Joint Appointment type "Each appointment receives a separate step" is enabled and the submission has not reached a consolidation step, committee chairs will see two items in both the CURRENT STEP and DUE DATE columns that will display the current process each of the candidate's appointments is in.

Downloading a Submission to Review Outside of the Workflow Module 

If you would like to review a submission outside of the Workflow module, you may be able to use the submission download functionality to download the contents of the submissions for offline viewing. The submission download functionality may be turned off for the institution by your university administrator, who will need to submit a work request to Watermark.

If a committee member downloads a submission for offline access while the committee step is still active (i.e., via the Inbox), and a Member Form is configured, the committee member’s download will include any responses they can see that were published through that Member Form for the given submission. This ensures that downloads fully reflect the committee member’s online view as of the time of the download. However, once the submission progresses past the committee member step, downloads of the submission from the History table will not include the member responses, as they are not part of the permanent submission record.

If committee members used a Member Form to collaborate during a committee step, and the submission is eventually sent back to that committee step by a subsequent reviewer, will they regain access to their “My Response” content?

Yes, but they will be visible only as unsubmitted draft responses. Committee members would need to re-publish their responses in order for the chair to see them again.