We have significantly reviewed the approval workflow that approves the issuance and revision of SOPs. At the same time, Dive now knows what language the SOPs are written in, and translation and text-to-speech now work based on that language.

① Approval workflow has been significantly reviewed

Previously, the approval workflow was only one per group, and approvers were selected from administrators of that group and higher-level groups. Approvers from cross-functional departments such as quality assurance and safety management could not be designated, and the approval destination could not be changed based on the content of the revision. We have now made the following improvements. The approval workflow is a feature for Pro plans and above.

● Company-wide common approval workflows can now be set up

Multiple workflows can be created for different purposes, and one is selected when publishing an SOP. Teams without any group configuration can now use approval workflows.

The settings are located in the user management icon in the sidebar. Select "Company-wide (team)" in the target bar at the top and click [Approval workflow] for a company-wide one, or select a group and click to set up one for that group.

• Company-wide approval workflow … Created by owners and team administrators, and can be selected by everyone in the team
• Group approval workflow … Created by group administrators and above of that group, and can be selected by members of that group

● Approvers can now be designated by "role," such as job title or qualification

Previously, individuals were nominated directly, but now you can set "what role should approve" for each step. The actual approver is determined by the initiator and their affiliation and qualification status at that time.

• Higher up as seen from the initiator … Based on the initiator's group affiliation, designate the administrator of that group / one level up / two levels up / three levels up. One workflow can be reused across all departments
• Group Administrator … Designate someone with administrative authority in a specific group. Use this when designating cross-functional departments such as safety managers or quality assurance
• Administrator within the team … Designate someone with the target authority across the entire team, regardless of group
• A specific person … Nominate an individual directly (same designation method as before)
• Holder of a qualification … Designate someone who holds that qualification validly. Those whose qualifications have expired are automatically excluded from the candidate list

When multiple conditions are lined up in a single step, anyone who meets any of them becomes a candidate (for example: direct supervisor or quality standardization certificate holder). Steps can be labeled with names like "direct supervisor" or "safety manager."

To clarify who the approval will go to when written by role, we have added [Check who it goes to] in the edit screen. If you tentatively select the initiator, the approver at that time is displayed.

In [Advanced settings] for each step, you can distinguish between approval and review, passage conditions (pick one when raising / any one person / everyone), and non-approval reviews. If not opened, it defaults to the previous configuration method of simply listing approvers in order.

● At the time of publishing, you can now select the approval workflow and revision reason

Previously, the approval workflow for the affiliation group was automatically applied, but now you select the approval workflow on the publish screen and confirm the approver at that time.

• For the "Pick one when raising" step, you nominate the actual approver from the candidates
• If you belong to multiple groups, you select "Which affiliation should it be based on?" The approver such as "direct supervisor" is determined based on the affiliation you selected here
• If there is a step where the approver cannot be determined, the system displays which step and does not start the request
• If there is an approver who cannot view the destination folder, the system notifies you

Register revision reasons such as "changes related to allergens" or "correction of typos," and assign approval workflows to each one. Then when you select that reason at the time of publishing, the corresponding approval workflow is automatically selected. Company-wide default and group-specific defaults can also be set.

Also, when you start a request, the approver and step details at that time are kept on the requesting side. Even if you edit the approval workflow afterward, already-running requests are not affected.

● You can now specify the resume position after rejection and withdraw requests

Previously, when you corrected a rejected SOP and resubmitted it, you always had to start over from the first step. With this release, the person who rejects can choose either "Start over from the beginning" or "It may resume from my step (for minor fixes)." The default is "Start over from the beginning."

In addition, the initiator can now withdraw requests where approval is not progressing because the approver has resigned or been deactivated, reverting it to a draft. This is done from [Withdrawal] next to the "In approval flow" display at the top of the SOP. The withdrawal record is kept in the revision history.

● Owners can now configure approval settings

The content of the approval workflow (who approves) is set by the operations manager in user management, and what is approved is now decided by the owner. We have added "Approval settings" to the [Security] tab in Security Settings.

• When approvers are designated by qualification, the expiration date is confirmed again at the time of approval (default: on)
• Allow the initiator to also be an approver (default: off)
• Allow publishing without approval (default: off)
• Allow building an approval workflow on the spot when publishing (default: off)
• Allow resuming from the rejector's step after rejection (default: on)
• Require choosing a revision reason when publishing (default: off)

With the setting to confirm qualification validity at the time of approval, no record of approval by someone whose qualifications have expired will be retained. If there is no one who can approve due to expiration, the system automatically reassigns to a valid person with the same condition (role).

● Impact on existing settings

The approval workflows previously configured for groups are inherited as "approval workflows for that group." The approvers, step order, and approval flow remain unchanged. What changes is where you edit them: instead of the [Approval flow settings] in the group's […] menu, edit from [Approval workflow] in the target bar in user management.

② You can now set the "Original language" for SOPs

Previously, Dive did not track what language an SOP was written in. For this reason, if SOPs created in languages other than Japanese were read aloud without translation, the audio might not be generated correctly (nearly silent in Vietnamese and Indonesian, or sounding like Japanese in romanized form in Portuguese, etc.).

Now each SOP has an original language, and translation and text-to-speech are based on that language. The text-to-speech for an SOP does not change based on the language setting displayed on the viewer's screen.

● Set for each SOP

Open [Basic information] on the SOP edit screen and select the language in "Original language" under "Playback & display settings." This is not where translation is executed, but where you specify the language to use as the standard for translation and text-to-speech.

● Decide the default for SOPs you create going forward

If an entire team at an overseas location creates SOPs in the local language, you can set the default in the [Terminology Glossary] dictionary under "Language of SOPs you create from now on" (team administrator or above). This does not affect already-created SOPs.

The original language for newly created SOPs is automatically determined in the following order: language specified in AI analysis of materials → team default → language displayed on the creator's screen. Existing SOPs are treated as Japanese, so the behavior is the same as before. If there are SOPs created in a language other than Japanese, please check the above settings.

③ Blank cells in the Terminology Glossary can now be filled with machine translation

The Terminology Glossary is a table where translations for each language are registered for each term. Since there are many languages, filling in blank cells one by one is time-consuming work.

From [Translate blanks], you can now bulk-fill empty cells with machine translation. The scope can be selected from "currently displayed languages," "all languages," or "choose a language." If there are many entries, you can stop midway, and the results so far are retained.

The translation results are entered only in the table being edited and are not automatically saved. Please verify the contents before saving. The Terminology Glossary is a Core plan feature and above.

④ Other improvements

● Question options and values marked as "Normal" in inspection are now translated

Previously, question options were not translated and were displayed in their original language. Now the options and the values marked as "Normal" in inspections are also translated, and when original language display is enabled, the original text is shown in small text below the translation. The content of the recorded answers remains unchanged.

● Language names are now displayed in the language itself

On the screen for selecting translation languages, only Japanese or English language names were shown previously, but now they are displayed in the language itself (such as Tiếng Việt for Vietnamese) according to the language displayed on the screen. On Japanese screens, language names are displayed in Japanese as before. People in those locations can now more easily find their language.

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