Objective:

• Assign users to view and acknowledge a policy
• Check what users have not acknowledged a policy after it is assigned

Environment:

• PolicyStat

Additional Information:

Ensuring users have both read and acknowledged a policy's content can be critical for both legal and procedural reasons.

PolicyStat makes this process simple through the ability to assign acknowledgments by a user or by a user group. In addition, acknowledgments can be set to recur each time a policy is updated to ensure users are aware of the latest revised version of the policy. 

Users with Area Manager or Site Administrator permissions can assign or unassign policy acknowledgments to individual users or user groups. Area Managers or Site Administrators can then view and track completions by a user or by a policy.

For more on User groups, see this article.

For more on incomplete acknowledgment notification emails, see this article.

For an example of an acknowledgment required notification email, click here.

Only one assignment to acknowledge per user can be made per active version of a document. If a second assignment to acknowledge needs to be made, a new draft version must be started and a change in the document content (not just properties or attachments) must be made. The new version must be approved, then the new assignment to acknowledge can be made.  If a new version is created and approved with no changes, assignments to re-acknowledge cannot be made since no changes were made in content.  Recurring acknowledgments will also not be assigned if no changes were made in the content of a new active version.

Important:  Notification emails to assigned users are sent once a week on Monday night.
No immediate notification is sent when an acknowledgment is assigned.  
The assignment will display on the homepage dashboard for each user immediately.

Assign Acknowledgments (02:12)

Procedure:

Assigning Acknowledgments

1. Acknowledgements can be assigned for active and scheduled policies. From the PolicyStat homepage, click Assign Acknowledgments under the Acknowledgments header.
   
   
2. Select Users or User Groups to assign Acknowledgments by using the search bar on the left column.
   
   
3. Locate the polic(ies) to assign acknowledgments within the right column.
4. Select all displayed policies by clicking the Select All check box (1), select individual policies using their respective checkboxes (2), or use the filters to narrow the search (3).
   
   
5. When all users and policies have been selected, click Assign Acknowledgments (4).

NOTE: By default, PolicyStat assigns acknowledgments that only require a user to acknowledge the first time policy is assigned. To re-assign acknowledgments whenever changes are approved, click Automatically assign when new versions with changes are approved (5).

If a new version is approved, but no changes occur on the actual content, it will not trigger the recurrence to acknowledge. Changes in the properties page title and attachments alone will not trigger the recurrence either.

View and Assign Incomplete Acknowledgments by Policy 
Users who have ownership permission for a policy (Owner/Area Manager/Site Administrator) can also view a list of users who are assigned to acknowledge a policy.

1. Open a policy for which ownership permissions are assigned and scroll to the bottom.
2. Locate the heading titled Recurring Acknowledgments and click the  symbol to expand.
   
   
3. If desired, assign more users to acknowledge by clicking the Click to assign more acknowledgments link.

Note:  When assigned, a user is indefinitely required to acknowledge an old (past) version even if a new version replaces it (revised or not revised). User's are not automatically required to acknowledge the new version when an old (previous) one is already assigned.  The user will not be automatically redirected to the new active version as that one was not assigned.

Users that are Deactivated

• All past completed acknowledgments are retained for a deactivated user with their account.
• To see a deactivated user's completed acknowledgment history, restore the user to active status and then run the needed report.  You can then deactivate the user account.
• When restoring a deactivated user all completed acknowledgments will appear in reports but previously assigned incomplete acknowledgments will not appear since they were removed automatically when they were deactivated.
• Deactivating a user will unassign any incomplete acknowledgments.

Scheduled Policies

For sites with the Scheduled Effective Date feature enabled, policies which are scheduled to become effective at a later date can also be assigned acknowledgments, using the same process as listed above. For more on the Scheduled Effective Date feature, see this article.

To filter the list of policies to only display those which are scheduled (or active), use the Status filter.

To check the status of a policy before assigning acknowledgments, review the status in the final column of the display.

This article applies to the following user roles: