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External Reviewers

Invite a principal contractor or client outside your company to review and approve a workpack, and learn how invited reviewers find and action their work.

External Reviewers

Some workpacks need a sign-off from someone outside your own company — most often the principal contractor or client reviewing a subcontractor's Inspection & Test Plan. External reviewers let you add those people to a workpack's approval chain by email, without first setting them up as members of your team. They receive a secure, password-free link, open just the workpack they were invited to, and record their approve-or-reject decision.

This page covers both sides of that exchange: the host who invites a reviewer, and the reviewer who receives the invitation.

For the Host: Inviting an External Reviewer

External reviewers are added the same way as internal approvers — through the approval chain on the workpack. See Approvals & Sign-Off for the full picture of how the chain works; this section focuses on the external part.

Add an external approver to the chain

You build the approval chain while the workpack is still in draft. On the workpack's detail page, find the Approval Chain card.

  1. Click Add approver to create a new step in the chain.
  2. In the step's type dropdown, choose External (the alternative is Internal, for someone already on your team).
  3. Enter the reviewer's email address. This is the address the invitation will be sent to, so check it carefully.
  4. Optionally enter a role (for example, "Principal Contractor" or "Client QA") so everyone can see who this step represents.
  5. Use the up and down arrows to position the step in the order you want decisions to happen.
  6. Click Save to store the chain.

You can mix internal and external steps freely, and add as many as the review process needs. Each step in the chain decides in sequence.

Send the invitations

Adding an external email to the chain does not contact anyone yet — it only records who will be invited. The invitations go out when you submit the workpack for approval.

  1. With the chain saved, click Submit on the workpack.
  2. In the submit dialog, choose how much the reviewers will see (this is the visibility setting). This choice is now enforced end to end — it controls what an external reviewer can open, not just what they see at submission:
    • Approval only — the reviewer sees the full workpack (its activities, attachments, and progress) only while their decision is pending. This is the default. Once they record their decision, the detail is hidden from them again; they keep the workpack's summary, the approver chain, and — where they signed — the signed record.
    • Ongoing — the reviewer keeps full visibility of the workpack as it continues to progress on site after approval, not just up to their decision.
  3. Click Confirm to submit.

Note: Choose Ongoing when the reviewing party (for example the principal contractor) needs to keep watching the workpack through on-site execution. Leave it on Approval only when their involvement ends once they have approved or rejected. If an Approval only workpack is later revised and re-submitted to the same reviewer, the detail becomes visible to them again while their new decision is pending.

On submit, each external email in the chain receives an invitation to review the workpack. Once the workpack is submitted, the chain becomes read-only — you can no longer freely re-order or edit steps.

Replacing or correcting a reviewer

If you submitted with the wrong email, or a reviewer needs to be swapped out, you don't have to start over. On a submitted workpack, any step that is still pending shows a Replace action.

  1. Click Replace on the pending step.
  2. Choose whether the replacement is Internal or External, and enter the new person or email.
  3. Optionally adjust the role.
  4. Enter a reason for the change — this is required and is recorded on the workpack's audit trail.
  5. Confirm. The new reviewer is invited in place of the old one.

Steps that have already been approved or rejected cannot be changed.

For the Reviewer: Receiving and Actioning an Invitation

If you've been named as an external reviewer, you don't need an existing account or a password to take part.

Opening your invitation

You'll receive an email invitation to review a workpack. Opening the secure link in that email signs you in automatically — there's no password to create or remember. If a one-time code is requested, enter the code from the email to confirm it's you.

This sign-in is scoped to the work you were invited to. You will not see any of the host company's other projects, workpacks, or data — only the workpacks that have been shared with you.

Finding workpacks shared with you

Once signed in, the workpacks awaiting your attention appear in the Incoming view. Each row shows:

  • Name — the workpack's title; click it to open the full workpack.
  • Project — the project the workpack belongs to.
  • Status — where the workpack currently sits in its lifecycle.
  • Last edited — when it was most recently updated.

When a workpack is waiting specifically on your decision, the row is flagged with an Action required badge so you can tell at a glance what needs you next.

On a phone, the table keeps the name and the action flag in view and tucks the project and last-edited details away on wider screens, so you can triage from the field.

Reviewing and deciding

  1. From the Incoming view, click the workpack name to open it.
  2. Read through the workpack — while your decision is pending you can see the inspection items, attachments, and history you need to review it.
  3. When you're ready, record your decision:
    • Approve — sign off using the on-screen signature pad, and optionally add comments. A signature is required to approve.
    • Reject — send it back with comments. A short explanation (a sentence or so) is required so the host knows what to fix.

Your decision moves the workpack to the next step in its chain, or completes the approval if you were the final reviewer. What you can do is limited to reviewing and deciding — external reviewers don't edit the workpack's content or manage the team.

After you decide

If the workpack was shared for approval only (the default), its detail is hidden from you once you record your decision. When you open it again you'll see a "Detail hidden after your decision" message in place of the activities and attachments, explaining that the workpack was shared for your decision only. You keep:

  • the workpack's summary and its approver chain;
  • a link to download the signed record where you approved it;
  • the ability to see the detail again if the workpack is revised and re-submitted to you (while that new decision is pending).

If the workpack was shared as ongoing, nothing changes after you decide — you keep full visibility as it progresses on site.

Managing Your Reviews Across Subcontractors

If you review workpacks for more than one subcontractor, the My reviews page (in your personal area) gathers every workpack assigned to you for review in one place, regardless of which subcontractor sent it. From there you can filter by subcontractor and by your decision state (pending, approved, or rejected) and open any workpack to review it.

Sharing your reviews with your organisation

Reviewers are often part of a larger organisation — for example, several people at a principal contractor who each review different subcontractors' workpacks. From My reviews you can choose to share your reviews with your organisation. Sharing is opt-in and per-organisation:

  • Members of the organisation you share with, who have workpack access, will see which workpacks you review and their status — a visibility summary, not the workpack detail.
  • You can stop sharing at any time from the same page. Both sharing and stopping are recorded on the workpack's audit trail.

When you share, those workpacks appear in your organisation's Assigned to us view (see Workpacks Overview), so your team has an at-a-glance picture of what's out for review and where each item stands. Only the reviewer who was assigned can open a shared workpack's detail — colleagues see the status summary but not a cross-tenant link into the subcontractor's workpack.