Required Roles: Workspace Manager (to enable the setting)
Applies to: Collaboration steps, Review steps, Review Content steps, Periodic Review steps
Democratic Workflows is an optional feature flag that controls whether all active step participants, or only the step creator, can cancel, edit due dates, add or remove participants, and complete a collaboration or review step.
Overview
By default in Kivo, the person who initiates a collaboration or review step is the only one who can manage it: cancelling it, adjusting the due date, or removing participants. Everyone else assigned to the step is a participant but has no authority to take those actions.
When Democratic Workflows is enabled, any user who is an active participant in a collaboration or review step gains the same management permissions as the person who started it.
For quality and regulatory teams, this setting is directly relevant whenever multiple authors, reviewers, or subject matter experts are assigned to a document step and you need to decide how much control each person should have.
What changes when Democratic Workflows is enabled
The table below summarizes the key differences.
Action | Default (off) | Democratic Workflows on |
Cancel or end a collaboration or review | Creator only | Any active participant |
Edit the due date | Creator only | Any active participant |
Remove a participant from the step | Creator only | Any active participant |
Save or complete the step | Creator only | Any active participant |
Add participants to a step | Creator only | Any active participant |
Active participant means a user assigned to the specific step whose session is currently in progress, not just anyone with access to the document.
Detailed Behavior by Action
Cancelling or ending a step
Off: Only the user who started the collaboration or review can cancel it or mark it complete. If that person is unavailable, a Workspace Manager must intervene.
On: Any participant in the step can cancel or complete it. This is useful when teams work across time zones or when the initiating author has left the organisation, but it means the step can be closed by any assigned participant without the initiator's involvement.
Editing the due date
Off: Only the creator can change the due date on a collaboration or review.
On: Any active participant can update the due date.
Note: This does not apply to Training steps, even when Democratic Workflows is enabled. Due dates on training sessions remain creator-only.
Removing participants
Off: Only the creator can remove a user from a step.
On: Any active participant can remove another participant. Removals are recorded in the audit trail regardless of who performs them.
UI visibility
When Democratic Workflows is off, participants who are not the creator will not see the Cancel, Save/Complete, Change Due Date, or secondary action controls (the ⋮ menu) in the document workflow panel. Those controls are hidden entirely.
When Democratic Workflows is on, all active participants see and can use those same controls.
What does not change
Enabling Democratic Workflows does not affect the following:
Approval steps: Approval authority is governed separately by approver permissions and e-signature configuration. Democratic Workflows has no effect on who can approve or reject a document.
Training steps: Training sessions remain creator-controlled. Participants cannot cancel a training session or change its due date regardless of this setting.
Workspace Manager overrides: Managers can always intervene in any active step via Manager Mode, independent of this setting.
Audit trail: All actions (cancel, due date changes, participant removals) are logged with the name of the user who performed them, whether or not Democratic Workflows is enabled.
Document locking: The document lock behavior when a collaboration is cancelled is unchanged.
Which workflow steps are affected
Step type | Affected by Democratic Workflows? |
Collaboration (co-authoring or editing) | Yes |
Review | Yes |
Review Content | Yes |
Periodic Review | Yes |
Approval (DocuSign, Kivo Signature, or Simple Approval) | No |
Training | No |
Choosing the right setting for your Organization
Neither setting is inherently more compliant than the other. The right choice depends on your team's operating model and the controls you need to demonstrate.
Consider keeping Democratic Workflows off if:
Your SOPs or quality manual require that the person who initiates a review or collaboration is the only one accountable for closing it out.
You want a clear single point of ownership for each step to simplify deviation investigation.
Your teams are small and the initiator is reliably available.
Consider enabling Democratic Workflows if:
You would like to operate in a lean and efficient manner, trusting trained users to interact with workflows as they see fit.
You frequently hit bottlenecks when the initiating user is on leave or has left the organisation.
Your quality system defines step accountability at the team level rather than at the individual initiator level.
In either case, Kivo's audit trail captures who performed each management action, which supports traceability requirements under 21 CFR Part 11, EU Annex 11, and ISO 13485.
Note: This setting is configured at the organisation level by your Workspace Manager. It applies to all users and all modules where collaboration and review steps exist. Contact your Customer Success Manager or Kivo Support if you need to change it.