What happens when an audience is removed from a DocRead configured document?

This blog post will explain what happens to tasks and reading receipts when a SharePoint Group or SharePoint Global Audience is removed from a previously configured document in DocRead for SharePoint.

Let’s assumed a document is already configured to be sent to a specific group of users. Each user within the group has a DocRead task to read the document by a deadline. To see how this is configured – the ‘edit properties’ window as shown below:

In the example above, individual tasks are then assigned to all users who are members of the ‘All United Staff’ group.

Once assigned, those individuals will then be able to view and confirm the task within their reading list (a DocRead web part placed on the intranet site)

DocRead reports monitor who has and has not completed the tasks…

You can see in this report that 14 people have completed the task and 2 (Foya Farrington and Helen) have not.

The current status of the receipts report looks like this:

All 14 users who have completed the task are listed with positive receipts (note there is no mention of the 2 people who have not yet completed the task).

Now lets see what happens when we remove the group from this document.

To do this, return to the edit properties page for the item and simply delete the group details. (remember to save the page). Once this is done, let’s go to ‘Site Actions > Site Settings’ and select ‘Process Reading Tasks’ from the DocRead menu.

Now, when we go back to the Site Receipts report and filter for this specific task the report still shows the original 14 ‘Positive Receipts’ for the people who had completed the task, but now includes 2 new ‘Negative Receipts’ for the 2 users who had not completed the task before the group was removed. Receipts are retained indefinitely in this report until you decide to follow the archiving procedure.

When we look back at the users DocRead web part, you will notice that the task is removed from ALL users reading lists (no one will see a link to the task whether they completed it or not).

The item is also removed from the Site Audience report. This report will only display current DocRead reading items (i.e. items that are currently assigned to a group of users by DocRead).

Please also review the blog post: What happens if the audience is changed on a DocRead configured document.