How do I manage locking for documents?

The 'Auto-lock' Setting

When creating documents in WriteUpp, you can choose between two locking controls:

Automatically lock documents after 24 hours (Auto-lock ON)
No automatic locking - Editability is maintained, with the protection of version history (Auto-lock OFF)

In both cases, version history has been implemented, so you have a full audit trail of changes made to the document. You also have the ability to manually lock documents (thereby rendering them non-editable) if you wish to do so.

If you do NOT want WriteUpp to automatically lock your documents 24 hours after they are created, you can turn this functionality off by going to Settings -> General (only Site Administrators can do this) and moving the 'Auto lock' switch to the left:

Making this change means that documents will continue to be editable long after they were created, as they will not be locked after 24 hours. However, with the presence of version history, you will be able to see every save that has been made to the document, including when it was made and by whom.

Viewing the Version History of a Document

To see the version history for a document...

Go to the Patient Summary, select the 'Files' tab and open an existing document. At the bottom of the screen click on the View History icon:

You will see a modal detailing the history of the document:

From here, clicking on the Eye icon within a line will open up that particular version of the document, as it was when it was saved:

You can only view historic versions of documents; they cannot be edited.

Or clicking on the Double arrow icon allows you to revert the document back to that particular version, replacing the current content:

Manually Locking Documents

To manually lock a document so that it is no longer editable (regardless of the 'auto-lock' setting)...

Click on the Lock icon at the bottom of the document screen:

This will only appear once you have made the first save of a document and will not save any changes made since the previous save. When you click on the Lock icon, you will be warned that by locking the document you will lose any unsaved changes and prevent further amendments:

When you click on OK, you will be taken back to the locked document.

Hovering your mouse over the Key icon at the bottom of the screen will show who locked the document.

Unlocking Documents

If a document has been prematurely locked to changes, just click on the Key icon at the bottom of the screen to open it again:

You will then see confirmation that it's been unlocked, with no need to save the changes to take this into account.

Updated on: 05/06/2024

Was this article helpful?

Thank you!