I'm really curious about how DevOps teams tackle the challenges of document workflows that need approvals and a solid audit trail. In the organizations I've worked for, automation mostly covers infrastructure and deployments, but documents like policies, security docs, vendor contracts, and compliance-related materials often end up in shared drives with manual approval processes, making it hard to track everything properly. I've been exploring structured approaches that implement clear approval paths, version control, retention policies, and allow for easy searching of content. Some teams stick with internal tools, while others go for dedicated Document Management Systems (DMS) like Folderit. For those of you working in regulated environments, how do you bridge the gap between these workflows and traditional DevOps processes? Do you incorporate document management into your systems, or is it still treated as a separate task?
1 Answer
One way to handle all your documents without complicating things too much is to just use Git for version control. It might sound odd at first, but many so-called document workflow tools are just pricey ways to hide your files in deep folder hierarchies. For the compliance documents that actually require signatures, sure, you'll need a system for that. But for most documents, you might just be adding unnecessary steps with approval processes that aren't really needed.
Exactly! Plus, a lot of Git repositories can set up merge approvals. You can create rules that require sign-offs from the relevant departments whenever you need to make updates, like getting approvals for the vacation policy from HR or IT.