Most HR professionals spend a lot of time sharing information. Whether it's a team of recruiters who share job openings, resumes, or skills assessment information, or a group of HR generalists creating documents, reports, or presentations, a great deal of information is sent to a wide variety of recipients for review, revision, or approval.

The new reviewing tools in Microsoft Office not only help you collaborate by making it easy for you to send your work to your HR colleagues for review; they also help you keep track of your document's progress and allow you to integrate comments into one cohesive document. And when you send e-mail messages with attachments for review, your reviewers receive documents that are automatically prepared for collaboration.

Creative collaboration

With the Send to/Send for Review function in Office XP and later, effective collaboration is easier. For example, imagine you've just started working as a lead recruiter for a small to mid-size company that only hires top quality job candidates. Your team has been meeting for several days to discuss how to write a description for the latest job opening. You've collected everyone's input regarding the details around qualifications, skills, education, special interests, and other pertinent information, and you've been tasked with putting together a draft of the job description. You've created similar job descriptions before at a different company, so you sit down at your computer and open the last file that you developed.

Preparing the document in a team-based situation

Using your last job description file, you begin by reviewing the old information and deciding which parts to eliminate and update, and which to keep. You decide that any details about the old job opening need to go, but that you'll keep the generic description.

Working with information from e-mail discussions, you've kept up with a lot of your team's research on this job opening, and one of your team members has put together a document of existing job descriptions from similar requests in an old message. You know that with a little bit of editing, you can use this message almost verbatim to help create your job description. Since Microsoft Word is your e-mail editor for Microsoft Outlook®, you can very easily cut and paste from one document into another, and with the Paste Special features in Word, it's easy to maintain the unique formatting and style of the job description document you're trying to prepare.

As you review the existing material, you find that you have a few questions regarding the information that will be retained from the e-mail message you're referencing (for example, you've decided to change the number of years of experience needed and the contact information for the job opening). To draw your team members' attention to these issues, you decide that you need to insert these questions as comments.

To insert questions or comments

1. Open the document in Microsoft Word.

2. Select the text or item you want to comment on.

3. On the Reviewing toolbar, click Insert Comment. (If the Reviewing toolbar is not visible, on the View menu, point to Toolbars, and then click Reviewing.)

    Note   Office XP users click the New Comment button on the Reviewing toolbar.

4. Type the comment text in the comment area.
5. Save the document by clicking Save on the File menu.

 Note   You can also add comments by clicking Comment on the Insert menu.

Sending the document for review

You've made the preliminary changes, and your draft of the job description is ready for review by your team members. You're ready to save it on your own computer and prepare an e-mail message for your HR colleagues, asking them to review the job description.

To send a document for review

1. In the job description document you want to send for review, click the File menu, point to Send To, and then click Mail Recipient (for Review).

    Note   A new e-mail message is automatically opened, with your document attached. The subject line says, "Please review [document name]," and the body of the e-mail message reads, "Please review the attached document." You can edit this text, or you can simply send the message in this form by entering the recipients' e-mail addresses in the To line and clicking Send.

2. Once you've identified all the mail recipients you want to have review the document, you can click Send to send your message with the document attached.

Routing a document to reviewers in a specified order

Another way to collaborate on a document is by using the routing features of the Send To command to select the order in which you'd like your team members to review the document. This feature allows you to create a routing slip that lists the order in which your team members will receive the document you're sending for review. Then, as each team member suggests changes, answers questions, or makes revisions, the remaining members of your group receive the changes with the document to review, and they can add more input before you implement the final changes.

To route a document

1. In Word, open the job description document you want to route.
2. On the File menu, point to Send To, and then click Routing Recipient.
3. Click Address to select recipients.
4. In the Type name or select from list box, enter a name, and then click To. Repeat this step for each additional recipient, and then click OK.
5. Select the routing options you want.
6. To route the document, click Route.

When you send a document for review by using routing, you may want to let your reviewers know how to send the document to the next person on the routing slip.

To send a document on to the next reviewer

1. In Word, make changes and suggestions to the open document.
2. On the File menu, point to Send to, click Next Routing Recipient, and then click Route document to [recipient name].

When your team members receive your e-mail message, they will find the job description attached, and the reviewing tools will be displayed automatically when the file is opened. Reviewers can then add comments and suggest revisions to the text. After each member of your team has reviewed the job description and has replied to your message, you will be able to pull everyone's comments together into one document by comparing and merging the changes and suggestions.

More information

• To learn more about comparing and merging documents, see Compare and merge documents.
• To learn more about collaboratively reviewing documents in Office XP, see the The Review Cycle in Office XP.
• For other ideas about collaboration in Office, see Going Beyond E-Mail: Collaborating with Office.