ISO 9001 QMS in SharePoint

ISO 9001 QMS Controlled Documents System in Microsoft SharePoint

Our fixed-priced Controlled Documents solution is perfect for ISO 9001 QMS in SharePoint. A one off fee that includes deployment, config, live training and ongoing support.

• Version control end users access latest major version and editors minor versions.
• Automated review reminders Update documents on a schedule you define.
• Approval process documents undergo required checks before publication.
• Audit history shows transparent change, approval records ensuring compliance.
• Read Receipts document tracker displays who has/hasn’t read key documents.

ISO 9001 QMS in SharePoint – Trusted by Leading Brands

Our Controlled Documents system is trusted by organisations across many sectors of different shapes and sizes from 10 to 100,000 employees.

Introducing SharePoint’s Quality Management System

A Quality Management System is often a crucial requirement for many businesses. Did you know that your business can benefit from the ISO 9001 standard Quality Management System in Microsoft SharePoint? In our blog, we’ll help explain all the requirements you need to hit for the ISO certification. and go through what you need to do to get started with SharePoint’s document management features and more.

Implementing the requirements of the ISO standard is not an easy task, it can be a long-winded process, but SharePoint can be used as a platform to build the quality management system quickly. SharePoint can be used to meet multiple requirements for the certification, specifically in satisfying the requirements for Control of Documentation. There are lots of out-of-the-box features of SharePoint that Microsoft has included specifically to help create a cohesive, intuitive and adaptable Quality Management System.

The stages of the ISO cycle requirements have been outlined below, along with the native SharePoint features that may be used to satisfy the requirements if you build your ISO 9001 QMS in SharePoint.

Requirement: Documents Must Be Approved Before They Are Published

To comply with ISO 9001, you need to make sure that documents have an approval workflow before publishing. Out of the box, SharePoint offers functionality such as document libraries and workflows to meet the requirement of approving documents.

Within Microsoft 365 (formerly Office365) there are now additional products such as Power Automate (formerly Flow), available for automating the creation of approval tasks. 

Valto’s pre-built system will send emails to the approvers of each document to ask them to review the document and either approve or reject. All of this is done within the email, as it provides a link to the relevant document and two buttons with an additional comments box as shown below:

Requirement: Documents Must Be Reviewed/Maintained/Re-Approved or Removed After a Set Amount of Time

Another crucial aspect of ISO 9001 compliance is making sure there’s a regular schedule for re-approving convent. The SharePoint QMS offers multiple ways to satisfy this requirement. For businesses with SharePoint Server, the best way would be to create an information management policy that can automatically initiate workflows after a specified amount of time after the previous approval. This can then start off the next review approval process.

We have built a function in Power Automate that uses a schedule timer to check the documents’ review date frequently. If the document has passed its review date it can initiate a review process.

Requirement: The Latest Version of Documents Must Be Readily Available

ISO 9001 QMS in SharePoint functionality covers the requirement to keep up-to-date with versions in several ways. 

Firstly, the platform allows you to enable draft working with check-in/out functions, and to only show Major versions to end users.

This allows document owners to work on documentation in a draft state without it appearing to all other users of the system or requiring approval. Once the document owner is ready to submit the document, they can publish a version that would trigger the approval workflow. When the document is approved, it becomes a Major version and appears to all users.

Secondly, users can enable document version history on the document library. This forces the library to maintain a specified number of major and minor versions. Certain users can be given access to review previous versions of the documents.

The Latest Changes To The Documents Can Be Reviewed

Enabling the document version history in SharePoint means you can easily meet this requirement for QMS document control. This will allow approvers to easily view what amendments have been made to each document.

With a correctly-configured ISO 9001 QMS in SharePoint you can even restore a document back to a previous version if a mistake has been made, and this will be tracked as part of the version history.

SharePoint version history can now even be surfaced directly inside a Microsoft Word document, as shown below.

Requirement: Govern and Monitor External Documents

Recently, the majority of SharePoint extranets are built in SharePoint Online. This allows you to take full advantage of free external users. This means you only need to pay for the licences your employees are using and not for external users such as contractors or suppliers.

This means you can give access to external users and they can upload documentation directly. This allows for a much safer and more compliant document management process; you won’t need to manually move email attachments or scan receipts from suppliers, since they can add them directly themselves.

In the example screenshot you can see how simple it is to share your ISO 9001 Controlled Documents systems to external parties such as contractors, suppliers or auditors to collaborate on documents.

ISO 9001 QMS in SharePoint

Lots of the features we already mentioned would address this requirement, for example:

• Using workflows and policies to alert document owners when they must review, update or remove their documents on a regular basis.
• Build SharePoint views that hide documents that are marked as archived.
• Create navigational drop downs or tiles that navigate users to published versions.
• Only the latest versions of documents are available for all users.
• Ability to delete expired and unused documents that could be restored if required.

Requirement: Ensure The Documents’ Constant Accessibility

The documents in your system must be easy to access and understand. This is achieved by storing the documents within SharePoint in a logical way. The documents can then be tagged with keywords to make them even easier for end users to find via search.

The documents can be easily accessed through the web interface or even synced offline for users with intermittent internet connection. SharePoint can also be used as an Intranet Portal with web pages that make it simple to navigate to key policies as shown below:

ISO 9001 QMS in SharePoint – Read receipts

Keep track of the date and time of when employees have read specific documents. This gives you two main benefits: 

1. You are covered with an audit trial of evidence that an employee has read and confirmed acceptance to your documents.
2. The list will also highlight employees that have yet to confirm acceptance. The system will even automatically chase up the employee.

Our 5 Step Process

Our one off fixed-price ISO 9001 QMS Controlled Documents package for only £7,500 ensures auditable compliance:

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