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Guide · 5 min read

Document control in Confluence: approvals, signatures and read confirmations

Many quality teams already write their procedures in Confluence. What turns a page into a controlled document is not where it lives, but four things around it: a known state, an approval tied to the exact content, proof that people read it, and a record an auditor can follow.

What Confluence gives you, and what it does not

Confluence keeps every version of a page and controls who can view and edit it. That is a good base. It does not, on its own, say which version is the approved one, who approved it and what they approved, or who has read the version in force.

The four things an auditor will ask for

  1. A state and a number. Draft, in review, effective, obsolete, with a document number people can quote.
  2. An approval bound to the content. The name, date and meaning of each signature, and a way to show that the text did not change after it was signed.
  3. Read and understood. For each revision, who had to read it and who confirmed, with dates.
  4. A record you can hand over. The history of signatures, revisions and confirmations in one file.

Mistakes to avoid

  • Approving with a comment or a like. It proves nothing about the version approved.
  • Letting people edit an approved page freely. The approval then covers a text that no longer exists. Either lock editing or make every change visible.
  • Asking for read confirmation once. A new revision needs a new confirmation.
  • Keeping the evidence in e-mails. It is gone the day someone leaves.

Step by step with Clearlane Controlled Documents

  1. On a page, choose Controlled document. It gets a number and the Draft state.
  2. Name the approvers and what their signature means, then submit.
  3. Each approver signs with a personal signing password. The signature records the fingerprint of the exact content; any edit during the approval voids it.
  4. Once effective, name the people or groups who must confirm reading.
  5. Download the evidence file whenever an auditor asks.

For regulated teams, the validation page maps each 21 CFR Part 11 requirement and gives an OQ test script. See how Controlled Documents works →