This article describes what Concerns and Reading Receipt are, why the feature exists, and how it is used. Additionally, it explains how you, as an administrator, can access information and statistics about reading receipts.
Background
The Concerns and Reading Receipt features are essentially two separate functions:
- By specifying which users are Concerned by documents in a specific category, an administrator can highlight and emphasize which documents in the management system are important for specific users. Since we recommend having an open management system, the Concerns function is an effective way to show users which documents are relevant to them and should be prioritized.
This function should not be confused with Access, which determines whether a user can view the document. Access is a prerequisite for a user to be Concerned by a document.
- Reading Receipt. This can be considered an add-on to the Concerns function. By requiring a reading receipt for documents that a user is concerned by, users with permissions can track which documents have been read by which users. To activate a reading receipt, the user must first be concerned by the document.
This can be simplified as follows:
- The user must first have access to the document.
- If the user has access, the document can also concerns specific users.
If follow-up on read receipts is desired for certain selected documents that affect users, a reading receipt can also be required/activated.
How Users Easily See Documents That is Relevant to Me.
When navigating your categories via Documents » Navigate, users can enable the option Only documents relevant to me. When activated, only documents that directly concerns the user will be displayed, and categories without relevant documents will be grayed out. However, users may still have access to other documents that do not directly concerns them in their daily work. 
Each user can also view a list of documents they are expected to acknowledge with a read receipt. This list is found under My Documents.
How to Configure Concerns and Reading Receipt
Through the Concerns and Reading Receipt settings, you can determine whether any user is affected by the documents in a specific category and, if so, who. If you select Everybody with Access, all users with access to the category will also be concerned. If you choose Specific Users, you can select which Groups, Departments, Workspaces, or Users will be concerned by the documents.
Finally, you can also activate Reading Receipt for all documents in the category for all users you have chosen to be affected.
Note. Currently, there is no automatic notification function for documents published in a category where Reading Receipt is activated.* The system relies on users primarily monitoring the Needs a reading receipt by me list found under My Documents » To Do.
*An exception is when the publication was initiated by someone other than the approver. In this case, a notification is sent back to the person who initiated the publication, simply to indicate that the document is now published.
How to See Which Users Are Concerned by a Document and Whether a Reading Receipt Is Required
1. Through the Publish Dialog in a Specific Document
When publishing a document, you can view information about the category in which the document will be published via the Publish dialog. Next to this information, there is an information icon. Click on it to see the settings for the selected category, including which users are concerned by the documents in that category.
2. Through Show Properties in a Specific Document
By selecting Show Properties (i) within a document, you can access:
- Additional Information about your document, including Who created, approved or revised the document, which users are concerned by the document and whether a reading receipt is required.
- Reading Receipt tab (for users with the Access to Reading Receipt Statistics profile setting). Information is displayed on which users have read and acknowledged the document and which users have not. There is also an option to send reminders to those who have not read the document, either by notifying all affected users or specific individuals.
- Log. Displays who has taken actions in the document and when.
Note:
- Not all concerned users are equivalent to those with reading receipt activated in their category. Notifications sent to concerned users can be found in your own outbox by navigating to Notifications in the main menu and selecting Outbox in the notifications menu.
- The exact time when a user acknowledged a document is available under Log. However, the log for each document only shows activities for the current version! When a new version of an already published document is created, the approver decides whether a new reading receipt is required. If the user selects “No”, those who already acknowledged the document do not need to acknowledge the new version.
💬 Example:
- Version 1 is published.
- Version 1 is acknowledged by Anna and Bertil (this is recorded in the log for Version 1).
- A new version is created, published, and the user decides that no new reading receipt is required.
- Version 2 is acknowledged by Carin. In Reading receipt, you can see that the document was acknowledged by Anna, Bertil and Carin. However, the log for the current version (Version 2) only shows that Carin acknowledged the document. The information about when Anna and Bertil acknowledged the document is only available in Version 1.
Reading Receipt Statistics
- To obtain statistics for a subset of documents, define search criteria to narrow down the documents.
- Leave all search criteria blank if you want statistics for all published documents.
Click Run query [2] to retrieve the documents, and then click the icon resembling a chart [3].
This view now displays statistics per document based on the defined search criteria. If you want to view statistics by user instead, click Sort by users.
Last updated: 24 January, 2025