Assembly Lifecycle

Overview

Every assembly follows a lifecycle that ensures governance documents are reviewed, approved, and published with full traceability. Each stage has specific rules about what can be changed and what happens next.

Lifecycle Stages

Draft

A new assembly starts as a draft. In this stage you can freely edit the title, description, statements, sections, footer, and governance dates. Drafts are only visible to your team — they are not shared externally.

Approved

Marking an assembly as approved records the formal sign-off date. This is a governance milestone — it means the responsible authority has reviewed and accepted the content. The assembly remains editable after approval so you can prepare it for publication.

Published

Publishing is an irreversible action. When you publish an assembly, Dictiva:

1. Creates a publication manifest — an immutable snapshot of every statement in the assembly, including the exact title, body, and order at that moment
2. Locks the assembly — the content can no longer be edited
3. Records the version number — each publish increments the version (v1, v2, v3...)

Published assemblies serve as the official, citable version of your governance document. Stakeholders, auditors, and regulators can rely on the published version being exactly what was approved.

Why are published assemblies immutable?

Governance documents must be trustworthy. If a published policy could be silently edited, there would be no way to know what version was in effect on a given date. Immutability ensures:

• Audit trail — You can prove exactly what was published and when
• Accountability — Acknowledgments reference a specific, unchangeable version
• Compliance — Regulators require point-in-time evidence of what policies were active

Making changes after publishing

To update a published assembly, click New Version to create a draft copy. Edit the new draft, then publish it when ready. The previous version is preserved in publication history and the old version is marked as superseded.

Effective

After publishing, set the effective date to indicate when the assembly becomes enforceable. This is often a future date to give stakeholders time to prepare. Once the effective date passes, the assembly is considered binding.

Review Due and Sunset

• Review Due — The next scheduled review date. Dictiva highlights assemblies approaching their review deadline and shows an overdue warning if the date passes
• Sunset — The planned retirement date. After this date, the assembly should be archived or replaced

Governance Dates

Lifecycle dates must follow chronological order:

You can skip dates that don't apply — only set dates are validated against each other. For example, you can set an effective date without setting a review date.

Versioning

Each publication creates a numbered version. You can view all published versions in the Publication History section of the assembly detail page. This gives you a complete audit trail of how a governance document evolved over time.