We've released collaborative report review. Reports can now go through a review chain: you send a report to one or more reviewers, or to a whole role, and the reviewer opens it, edits it directly, and then approves it, sends it on to someone else, or sends it back to you. Every edit, comment and decision is kept in the report's history.

This replaces the comment-only review described in How to review a report. It is not a paid add-on, a Superuser switches it on in settings and it is then available to everyone in your workspace who can already review reports.

Until now, a reviewer could only approve a report or send it back with a note. If they wanted to change a sentence, they had to tell the author and wait. Now the reviewer holds the report while they review it and can make the change themselves.

A review can also pass through more than one person. The first reviewer can send it on to a second, or to a whole role such as Senior Clinicians, and the chain of who did what is shown beside the report.

Practices told us that review by comment was slow. A supervisor who spots a wording problem should be able to fix it, not write a note about it and wait a day.

Bigger teams also needed to send a report to a role rather than to a named person, so whoever is free can pick it up. And when something is queried later, they need to see exactly who changed what, and when.

Collaborative review is off until a Superuser turns it on, and it requires the V2 report builder. You can enable it yourself — there is nothing to request from us.

Go to Control Panel → General settings → Report Approval Settings. Alongside the existing Allow non-superusers to review reports setting, Superusers will see three new options:

These settings only appear on workspaces that use the V2 report builder.

What happens to reports already in review: once collaborative review is on, it applies to reports you send for review from then on. A report that is already out for review, and a draft that already has reviewers picked, will finish in the standard review flow.

The Approval history panel sits to the right of the report with three tabs - Chain, Comments and Audit - and a status pill that moves from Draft to In Review. Its subheading tells you which stage the report is at and who is holding it.

While the report is with a reviewer you can no longer edit the body, but you can still click Cancel review to take it back.

Reviewers are notified in Notifications. The notification names the report, who requested the review and when, with a View Document button to open it. The report also appears in their Reports list with an Awaiting your review badge.

When you open it, you hold the report: a green banner reads You're reviewing this report and you can edit the body directly. If someone else on the same stage opens it while you have it, they see {your name} is editing and can read the report but not edit it.

The action bar offers Approve, with Approve with comments and Approve & publish under the arrow, and Route to another.

Approving closes the review and marks the report Approved. The author then clicks Finalise to publish it — or the reviewer can use Approve & publish to do both at once.

Route to another asks where the report goes next: back to the author for changes, or on to another reviewer or role. You can add a note for whoever gets it next, and everyone on the chain can read that note.

If you are one of several people on a stage and would rather someone else took it, Let someone else review it hands the stage back to the group. Take it back reclaims it if nobody else has picked it up.

Anyone on the chain can leave a comment in the Comments tab at any time. The box at the top comments on the whole report, and supports bold, italics, lists, links, images and tables.

To comment on one particular part of the report, hover over a paragraph and click its pin, or use Pin a comment and choose the element. Pinned comments appear as numbered markers on the report — click a marker to read the comment. Every comment records who wrote it and which stage of the review it was made in.

Tip: the chain and audit trail are a useful record for clinical governance and supervision — they show who reviewed a report, what they changed, and when.

A Superuser in the admin view can open any report in review and see its chain. They can also:

If you have questions about setting collaborative review up for your team, or about which settings suit your governance requirements, start a chat with us — we're happy to help you get it configured.