The Invention Disclosure Form (IDF) is filled out by one or more inventors and submitted to the assigned attorney once complete. The IDF has four components: 1) Title; 2) Inventors; 3) Documents;  and 4) Questions.

Title - Inventors must provide a title before the record can be saved.

Inventors
The inventor creating a disclosure is automatically added as the first named inventor. Additional inventors can easily be added by clicking the "Add" button. The primary inventor can search from existing inventors that are from the same client. If the needed co-inventor doesn't exist in the list, the inventor can create a new contact by giving them a name and email address and alternatively assigning them as the first named inventor.

Documents
Inventors can drag and drop one or more documents into the disclosure. For example, inventors may wish to include diagrams, presentations, whitepapers and audio files to name a few. Once a document has been added, it is accessible to anyone with access to the disclosure. Documents can be added at any time by the inventor(s), the attorney assigned to the disclosure or account admins. The assigned attorney or account admins can remove any documents uploaded to the disclosure. However, the inventor(s) cannot.

Once a disclosure is saved for the first time, it's contents are captured into a pdf document which is now accessible in the disclosure. Each time a disclosure is saved, a new copy of it's contents are created as incremental revisions. Each revision is stored for historical purposes.

Questions
Inventors are given a series of questions to answer before a disclosure is submitted to the assigned attorney. By default, these fields are optional. However, one or more of the questions can be made mandatory. Click here for details on managing the disclosure form.

Sharing the disclosure with co-inventors
Once a disclosure has been saved for the first time, any co-inventors who already have a login can access and edit the it. This allows co-inventors to work on the disclosure together. As with all other records in AppColl, only one person can edit a disclosure at a time. 

Submitting the disclosure
Once a disclosure is completed, any of the inventors associated with it can click the "Submit" button. A popup window appears allowing the submitting inventor to add any comments along with the submission.
These comments are now part of the disclosure record and can be seen on the right side of the disclosure. The assigned attorney will be able to see these comments when opening the disclosure form.

Once the disclosure is submitted, none of the inventors can edit the inventor list or the questions. At this point, the attorney is reviewing. The only opportunity for further edits is if the attorney pushes the disclosure back to the inventor(s) by clicking the "Rework" button on the disclosure form.

Reworking the disclosure
If a rework is requested by the assigned attorney, the inventor(s) will receive an email alerting them to do so. Any comments added by the attorney are visible in the email. At this point, the disclosure has been re-opened for editing by the inventor(s). Once the changes are complete, one of the inventors can click the "Submit" button once again and enter additional comments in the comment popup window.