In previous blog posts I have:
The first of these posts provides a conceptual overview of the product and the 2nd is a detailed walkthrough of how to download, install, deploy and configure a SharePoint library so that it can be used with K-Docs Approve.
If this is your first exposure to K-Docs Approve, I recommend that you read these 2 posts as they are foundational in explaining how the solution has been designed and how it functions. If you are you are not some much interested in how to install and set up a library and eager to just understand what it offers users, you can probably skip or skim the second one.
In this article I am going to explain how user interact with the system once a library has been configured.
The Approvals Panel
The primary interacting users have with the system will be via the Approvals Panel which is most easily opened by clicking the Approvals Button or selecting the Approvals Menu Item from the library command bar when a single document item has been selected, although it can also be opened from the (…) item ellipsis menu.
Whichever method is chosen, the resulting action is to display the Approvals Panel, as shown below.
The Approvals Panel contains several controls.
Document Header
This control is displayed at the top of the panel and provides some key information about the selected document and a menu button that enables users to open it directly from the panel.
This can be useful because notification emails, sent to stakeholder in the review process, will likely click on links that will access the library and open the Approvals Panel directly and without this control it would be difficult to tell which document is in focus.
Approval Status Information
This control provides key status information about the current state, step status and the Approval Route that is being used for this approval cycle.
The Approval Route defines the roles and stakeholder involved in the approval process and is set up by the Administrators of the system.
You can easily see who is assigned to each role, simply by hovering over the status icon for the relevant step, as shown below.
The status icons provide a visual indication of current state of the approval process. In this case, the green check icon indicates that an Editor has submitted the document for Content Review and the process resides with the Content Reviewers, as indicated by the yellow clock icon. The grey pause icons indicates that the approval cycle has not yet reached those steps in the process.
By default, the selected tab will show the role assignments for the current step, but you can select any tab to view other role assignments. 
Note that K-Docs Approve is very flexible. If the Approval Route does not contain any assigned users for a stage in the process, it is assumed that the step is not required, and those tabs and icons are not displayed.
Comments Box and the Actions Log
Any stakeholder, that is to say any user with read and write permissions on the document, can add a comment to the Comment Box control at any time. They simply need to access the Approval Panel, type in an appropriate comment and click the Add Comment Button.
Whenever a user adds a comment or completes an action (submission to the next state, rejection or approval) an action will be recorded in the Actions Log. The screenshot below shows the log when the above comment was added, which was the action executed when editing was completed.
When users submit or approve a submission, comments are not required (although they should be encouraged to do so) but a submission cannot be rejects unless a comment is also added.
Users can only edit or delete their own comments up until the current approval cycle is completed (the document is published as a major version) and which point all comments are locked and cannot be updated subsequently.
When you access a document that has completed an approval cycle, and is currently published as a major version, you can still access the Approvals Panel which will be rendered like the one in the screenshot below.
You can then expand any of the previous approval cycles and view the actions log, comments and approval history.
Footer Controls
The footer section of the panel contains several buttons and other controls, as shown below.
The Submit Button allows users to indicate that the process is ready to advance and be evaluated by users assigned to a role in the next step in the approval cycle.
The Reject Button is only available for the Content Review, Quality Review and Final Approval states and it allows users to reject a submission. The screenshot below shows a document that has been submitted for Final Approval but is about to be rejected to one of the available previous steps.
When an item is rejected the approval state is set to the selected value and the approval step status value is set to the Rejected and the rejected icon will be displayed in the Approvals Button Column, as shown below.
Accessing the Approval Panel will show the step from which the rejection was made together with the item in the Actions Log.
The Notifications Toggle switch is only displayed to Administrators by default and provides a way to suppress sending email notifications which can be useful when setting the system up.
The Approvals Panel will usually close when clicking the Submit Button or Reject Button, but sometimes it is useful to keep the panel open, and this can be achieved by checking this Keep panel open checkbox control. This checkbox is only displayed to Administrators by default.
The Remote Publish Button is used to access the Publishing Dialog, described later. Note that the Remote Publish Button will only be enabled if the source library has been configured with at least one active publishing location. Again, this button is only displayed to Administrators by default.
The Quick Publish Button is an icon-only button, just to the left of the Remote Publish Button and is only displayed when the document is not currently an approved major version.
This button is only displayed to Administrators by default and allows them to circumvent the normal approval process and immediately publish a documents as a major version. This can be useful if a trivial update (such as correcting a typo) needs to be made, which does not warrant another complete approval process cycle.
The Obsolete Flag button (only displayed to Administrators by default) is the small icon only button the left of the Quick Publish Button.
When clicked, the document will be flagged as obsolete.
Notifications
K-Docs Approve is smart enough to figure out who the next-in-line stakeholders are, based on the Approval Route, the current state and next step in the process
These notification messages can be fully customised by an Administrator but they will likely contain hyperlink which, when clicked, opens a new browser window at the location in which the document resides and will then automatically open the Approvals Panel, as shown below.
Next Review Monitoring
If the library has been configured to track review periods, the Review column will display a color-coded status indicator based on when the document is next due for review.
Users can tell at a glance which documents need attention.