PM Invent comes with a standard workflow whereby inventor(s) submit an idea. 

Each disclosure has one and only one status at a time. Depending on the current status of a disclosure, there may or may not be an action to take. The above flow diagram illustrates the different statuses a disclosure can have, as well as any actions that are available for each status. 

Once an inventor submits a disclosure, they will receive an email indicating that they have a disclosure to review. 

1. Click the associated link in the email to review, or login to AppColl and go to the Invent module.
2. Click the Review link.

3. Once the disclosure is opened, the attorney sees answers to all the questions in a read-only mode along with the inventors. The attorney, or any account admin, can add/remove inventors, delete or upload documents or add/remove comments. The disclosure's questions can also be edited by account admins. You may wish to also open the associated PDF or click the Download All Documents button. 
4. Set any further fields to add Complexity or add any associated Dates, such as NDA Release or Planned filing. The date fields can be populated for informational purposes. However, these dates do not carry over the patent matter.
5. Comments can be added by clicking the Show History/Discussion link.
6. Review and work with comments as needed. Click the Add Comment button to add additional comments.  Note: Comments are visible to anyone viewing a disclosure, including the inventor. 
7. The attorney has four possible actions they can take:

• Clicking Do Nothing moves the disclosure to the 'Do Nothing' status, indicating that the disclosure will not be converted to a patent. 
• Clicking Rework moves the disclosure back to the 'Unfinished' status, allowing the inventors to edit and add more information. A popup window appears requesting the attorney to provide comments as to what is expected from the inventors. An email is sent back to the inventor(s) letting them know the attorney has request changes. Click here for instructions on editing the contents of this notification. 
• If the attorney wishes to convert the disclosure into an application, they would either click the File Non-Provisional or File Provisional button depending on the desired application type. Before an application can be created the disclosure must have a value for Attorney and AttorneyRef. By default, both of these fields are populated. Values for law firm, paralegal, partner and contributor can also be filled out. 

Any time an action button is clicked a comments popup window appears allowing the user to submit comments. Comments added from the "Rework" button will appear in the email sent to the inventor. Once one of the "File" buttons are clicked, AppColl creates an unfiled 'Utility: Provisional' or 'Utility: Non-Provisional' matter in the Matters Module. The inventors, attorney and attorneyRef listed in the disclosure are automatically carried over to the application. Any values in paralegal, law firm, partner and contributor are also carried over. Further, any documents uploaded to the disclosure are deposited into a 'Disclosure' folder created within the matter's Files folder.

Manually Changing Statuses 

Disclosure statuses change when an action button is clicked. Some status do not have action buttons meaning there's nothing left to do. It's reached the end of the road. There may be circumstances where manually changing the status is desired. For example, a disclosure may be marked as 'Do Nothing', yet the idea may need to be revisited. Account admins can manually change the status by doing the following:

1. Go to the Invent module.
2. Select the Checkbox next to one or more disclosures.
3. Click the Set Status button.
4. Click the Disclosure Status dropdown to select the desired status.
5. Enter any comments in the Enter Comments field. 
6. Click the Ok button. To further the example mentioned above, a disclosure set to 'Do Nothing' has no actions. However, manually setting the status to 'Unfinished' gives the inventor an action to submit the disclosure again.

Status - Unfinished

When a disclosure is first created and saved by an inventor, it has an 'Unfinished' status. Inventors are free to edit and save their disclosure until they are ready to submit it. The only available action the inventor can take is to submit their disclosure by clicking the "Submit" button. A popup window also appears allowing the inventor to provide any comments they wish to include with their submission. Once submitted, the disclosure's status changes to 'Submitted'. Note: Disclosures can have more than one inventor. This will be discussed further here.

Status - Submitted

Once a disclosure has been submitted by an inventor, the attorney assigned to the disclosure receives an email alerting him/her that a disclosure has been submitted and is ready for their review. Click here for instructions on editing the contents of this notification and on how attorneys are assigned to disclosures.

Status - File Non-Provisional

A disclosure changes to this status when the "File Non-Provisional" button is clicked. At this point, a Utility: Non-Provisional matter has been created and is linked as a subject matter connection back to the disclosure. The disclosure itself has reached the end of the line and there's nothing else to do. All future work is handled in the patent matter.

Status - File Provisional

A disclosure changes to this status when the "File Provisional" button is clicked. At this point, a Utility: Provisional matter has been created and is linked as a subject matter connection back to the disclosure. The disclosure itself has reached the end of the line and there's nothing else to do. All future work is handled in the patent matter.