Introduction

The Pending document screen is where the user that is logged in can view their documents that are waiting to be approved or rejected.

This screen is located in the My STAC area. The screen will show users how many documents are pending and needing their attention. 

How to use My Pending Documents?

Once a document is merged, it will go to the pending document screen of the suer that merged the document. 

If there are documents that are pending an attorney's approval, but the attorney is no longer an employee, or the documents are a few years old. It is recommended to Cancel the documents, so they are not e-filed or e-serviced, because those cases have most likely been closed.

What actions can be done on the Pending Document screen?

Edit

The edit options allow users to add a comment, mark an e-file document as an urgent filing, and mark a proposed order as an agreed proposed order.

Urgent Filing

Users can mark documents for urgent filing. However, it is important to understand this does not send the file with any sort of Priority.

The only difference for Urgent documents is that the Urgent field in the XML is sent as “Yes”, it does NOT mean the document will be sent ahead of any other document.

Only e-file documents can be marked for urgent filing.

Reject

In STAC we have the option to Reject or Cancel documents from the Pending Document screen and each option works differently.

If a document is rejected, the secretary that created the document will get a notification advising them the document was rejected. If the person that merged the Document rejects the document in the Pending Document screen before it was Approved, it will be deleted from STAC.

When an attorney is marking a document as rejected, they have the ability to add a comment to help the secretary know what information is incorrect or why the document was rejected.

The secretary will receive the rejected document again and will need to fix the mistakes and resubmit the document for the attorney to review and approve.

If the administrator adds a comment when the document is rejected. That comment will only appear in the Log section and cannot be edited.

Approve

When an attorney goes to approve a document, a warning box will pop-up to verify that the information/document is going to the correct case/recipient.

Once the document is approved, it will automatically be emailed, e-filed, or e-serviced.

Group

Allows users to group documents and images from the same Incident together to be e-filed under the same Portal Filing ID.

Proposed order records can only be grouped with other Proposed records; they can NOT be grouped with standard e-file records.

Draft

Attorneys can mark e-file documents as a draft. This is beneficial so that if a document is not ready to be sent, it can be marked as a draft and if an Attorney accidentally tries to approve that document, they will get an error message that notifies the user that the document is a draft.

To undo the draft and make the document available to be approved and sent, the user will select Draft at the top of the screen and then select Non-Draft

Only E-file documents can be marked as a draft.

E-service Recipients

This button is used to add or remove e-service recipients. The recipient will already have been selected based on the configurations set in the Document maintenance.

This is a good tool if the Attorney needed to add an extra recipient. The user will have the option to search the drop down to see the relationships from the case or the can search the directory for someone who is not in the case.

The log will keep track of when a recipient is added or removed, and it will also show the name of the user that made that change.

Cancel

In STAC we have the option to Reject or Cancel documents from the Pending Document screen. In order to see the Cancel option, the user must be configured as an Attorney. 

The cancel button is intended to work for E-file documents that return from the Clerk for correction, and the circuit no longer wants to send that file or have already filed the correct documents and wish to remove the previous filing from their Pending document screen.

The cancel button can also be used to stop the document from being emailed, e-serviced, or e-filed if they have not been initially sent yet. Once the email/e-service/e-file is sent, the cancel option does NOT undo the sending of these files, it only removes the record from the Pending Document screen.

If a merged document is waiting to be approved in the Pending Document screen, and the document is not correct, it should be REJECTED and not canceled. By rejecting, it is sent back to the secretary so they can make any necessary corrections and resubmit the document.

What are the requirements to see the Cancel Option in the Pending Document Screen?

1. The user that is logged in has a username associated to a Directory
2. The Directory has a Bar No
3. The Directory Type is NOT OTHER
4. The Directory Type must be related to a Relationship type that the internal relationship is ASA or APD (depending on if the office is SAO or PDO)