Standards and SOPs¶

Two libraries make the difference between an agent that sounds plausible and one that is actually right about compliance:

Standards

the external documents you must conform to, such as purchased ISO or IEC standards.
SOPs

your own standard operating procedures, the way your company says work should be done.

Load both, and the Quality, Regulatory and Compliance agents cite real requirements from real sources instead of remembering them approximately.

Both live in the document workspace under the COMPANY DOCUMENTS heading, below the product's own documents: Standards and Processes. They belong to the organisation, not to a product, so the documents panel shows them with no product chosen too (All products).

The standards library¶

Upload standards¶

Click the import action on the Standards header.
Drag files onto the drop area, or use Choose files or Choose folder. Whole folders including subfolders are supported.
Accepted formats are PDF, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, text, Markdown and CSV. A register over your purchased standards — an Excel list from SIS, say — belongs here: put it in the register subfolder (the Subfolder field, or drop a folder), and it becomes searchable next to the standards.
Colleag extracts the text as Markdown for search and citation. The wording is not rewritten.

Your purchased original is kept in your own quality-system repository, so any answer that cites a standard can be checked against the source document.

Each entry in the library shows its edition and the original filename, and the extracted text is read-only.

Watch for the extraction warnings

Two markers appear on entries that need care:

Scanned source read by OCR — the text came from a scan, so verify values against the original before you rely on them.
Extract hit the size cap and is incomplete — a large standard was only partly read. Check the original for anything missing.

Using standards while you work¶

From the Standards section you can open the purchased original, or remove an entry from the library. Ask the Regulatory or Quality agent which clauses apply to what you are writing, and it will work from these files.

Licensing is your responsibility

Standards are usually licensed per company or per seat. Only upload documents your organisation has bought and is entitled to use internally.

Standard operating procedures¶

Your processes live under COMPANY DOCUMENTS → Processes: procedures, work instructions, however your company describes the way it works. A new organisation starts with none, and that is a perfectly good way to work. There are two ways to fill the section, and you can do either at any time.

Start without procedures¶

You do not need any procedures to use Colleag. A company with none works from its company profile and its documents, and the list of expected documents names no procedure as their source. Add your own whenever it suits — during setup or months later, one file or a whole library.

Upload the procedures you have¶

Click the upload action on the Processes header, then:

Drop files onto the drop area, or use Choose files or Choose folder. PDF, Word, text and Markdown are accepted, up to fifty files at a time. Any description of how you work is welcome, formal or not.
Colleag reads every file and proposes, per file: a title, your own procedure number if the text carries one, the disciplines it governs, and the documents the text says the process gives.
Review the list. Correct what is wrong, fill in Gives where you know it, then click Import.

Each procedure becomes a document in your quality-system repository with the original file kept next to it, and is left as draft for your review. You keep your own numbering: QP-12 or P-4.2-03 are valid ids.

An uploaded procedure is read-only in Colleag. It is your controlled document, and it changes where you control it. To change the text, upload the next version: choose the process under New version of in the list.

Project folders¶

Under Projects, the import action takes a project folder as it is on your file server, filed under its order number. The import runs behind the page: close the dialog and keep working, the Projects header shows how far it has come, and a click on it brings the dialog back. The header counts projects; each project row counts its files.

The server files the folder as soon as it has been read, so you can close the tab, reload, or come back tomorrow. While anything is being imported, a small strip at the bottom left of the workspace says what and how far — wherever you are. A project read but not filed (an import from before this worked this way) shows there with Publish.

General documents¶

Anything that is neither a procedure, a standard nor a project — price lists, calculations, letters, reports — goes under General documents. Use the upload action on its header: choose files or a folder, name a subfolder if you like, and click Upload. Word, Excel and PDF are read and become searchable; other formats are kept as originals. The reading runs on the server, like a project import. You can also ask Colleag for a document in the chat and click Save on the result.

Describe a process instead¶

Not everything is written down. Click the speech-bubble action on the Processes header, or tell the assistant "I want to describe a process". It asks what the process is for, what starts it, what happens step by step, who is responsible and which documents come out of it. It reads the summary back, and on your yes it saves a draft process document.

The assistant writes down what you said and nothing else. A process written this way is edited directly in Colleag.

Say which documents a process gives¶

For each process, Colleag needs to know which documents it results in. That is what lets it say which documents a product is expected to have, and which ones to read first. This is Colleag's reading of your process, kept apart from its text, so it can be changed at any time — also for an uploaded procedure.

A row marked with a question mark has not said yet. Click the mark and the assistant asks, one process at a time, with a few likely documents to choose from. You can skip: a process without documents still reaches the agents as background, it is just not named as the source of anything.

During company setup¶

The onboarding assistant asks one question about your ways of working, with three answers: upload what you have, describe them instead, or start without and come back later. It is the same upload and the same questions as above. Nothing is added unless you upload or describe it.

Work on a procedure¶

Click a row under Processes to open the procedure in the canvas. Every procedure has the same shape: Purpose, Scope, Roles, Inputs, Outputs, Process, Decision rules, Records, and AI Agent Instructions. The last section is the part the agents read; the Inputs and Outputs tables say which documents in the product structure the procedure consumes and produces.

The workflow button in the canvas header opens the procedure's panel:

Field	Meaning
Status	`draft`, `in-review`, `approved`, `released` or `obsolete`
Version	The current version; release increments it
Review cycle	Months between reviews, driving the review-due date
Primary disciplines	The agents that follow this procedure on every turn
Supporting disciplines	The agents that know it exists and can read it

flowchart LR
    D["draft"] -->|Submit| R["in-review"]
    R -->|Approve| A["approved"]
    A -->|Release| L["released"]
    L -->|"marked Obsolete"| O["obsolete"]

Checks and the procedure's contract

The panel also shows Checks: what the platform found wrong or thin in the procedure (a missing section, an output without a document type, product data inside a company procedure). Saving is never blocked; Release is blocked while a check fails. Below the disciplines you see the procedure's contract: the inputs it reads, the outputs it produces with their path and document type, and the records it leaves.

Use Submit, Approve and Release to move a procedure through review. A procedure that has been released is marked Obsolete rather than deleted, so its history stays. Obsolete procedures sit in a collapsed Obsolete group at the bottom of the list. Every status change is recorded with who did it, when and any comment, so the register doubles as your audit trail.

How agents use all this¶

A procedure is part of an agent's brief, not a document that sits in a folder. For each agent, the AI Agent Instructions of every procedure that names that agent's discipline as primary are included on every turn. All agents see a one-line index of every procedure and can read the full text when they need it. Change the instructions and the governed agents change how they work.

Two more places show the link between procedures and your work:

Expected documents in the product's document workspace shows which procedure produces each expected document, and Draft with agent on a missing one asks that procedure's agent to draft it at the right path. A document that exists but has not reached the status the procedure requires is listed under Not yet at required status.
Every agent gets, under each procedure it follows, the list of that procedure's inputs that exist for the product (Read first) and the ones that are missing.
Settings → Colleagues → Instructions, with the product chosen, lets you mark a procedure not applicable for one product, with a reason. The agents then leave it out for that product only.

Troubleshooting¶

Problem	What to do
An agent cites a standard vaguely or not at all	The standard is not in the library, or its extract is incomplete. Check the Standards section for the OCR and size-cap warnings.
A big PDF imported but looks truncated	It hit the extraction size cap. Split it, or work from the original for the missing part.
Review dates are all wrong	The review cycle is per procedure. Open each one and set Review cycle.
The Processes section is empty	Nothing has been added yet, which is fine. Upload your own procedures or describe one to the assistant.
I cannot edit an uploaded procedure	Its text is read-only. Upload the next version and choose the process under New version of.
An agent ignores a procedure	Its primary disciplines do not include that agent, or it is obsolete, or it is marked not applicable for this product. Check the workflow panel.

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