How do I send documents to an external contractor and get them back?

This is the most common purpose of Meridian Portal and what it was designed to do best.

Although several variations are supported, the typical workflow consists of:

1. Use Meridian Power to send copies of the master (as-built) documents from the Meridian vault to a Meridian Portal project as described in Sending documents to Meridian Portal where they are placed in the For Routing state.
2. Send a package of the documents to the contractor as described in Sending packages. They will receive an email notification that the package is ready and a link to the package in Meridian Portal, which is placed in the For Revision state.
3. The contractor must log in to Meridian Portal and acknowledge that they have received the package as described in Acknowledging packages.
4. The contractor may download the documents as described in Downloading documents from packages. The contractor may revise the documents offline.
5. The contractor uploads their revisions as described in Uploading documents. The package is placed in the Draft state until the contractor sends them to the document controller and they are placed in the Acknowledge Receipt state.
6. The document controller must then acknowledge receipt of the documents from the contractor as described in Acknowledging packages. The contractor receives an email notification that the package was received and the package is routed to the Compliance Check state where the documents can be inspected for contract compliance.
7. Depending on the outcome of the compliance check, the package can then be routed several different ways for review, approval, returned to the contractor for more work, or released as new revisions of the master documents in the Meridian vault.

For a complete overview of the Meridian Portal workflow, see Moving documents in the workflow.