Objective:

• To understand how to insert hyperlinks into a policy

Environment:

• PolicyStat Editor

Additional Information:

A hyperlink is a computer command that links one file or webpage to another file or webpage. In PolicyStat, these links can link one policy to another, link to an outside webpage, or link to a file located on a shared drive.

The tutorial below addresses the basics of how to create and insert a hyperlink in the PolicyStat Editor.

Insert Hyperlinks (01:35)

Procedure:

Insert Hyperlinks

1. Select and highlight the text to be made into a hyperlink.
   
2. Click the Link button from the PolicyStat Editor toolbar.
   
3. A pop-up window appears. Enter the URL (website address) for the website or the path to the file that end users should be directed to (1).
4. With the site URL entered, click OK (2).
   
5. The text with a link should appear blue and underlined.
   
6. An important final step is to verify the link works. Scroll to the bottom of the draft and click Preview button.
   
7. In the Preview window, click the link to ensure it visits the appropriate website or opens the appropriate file.
   
8. If the link visited the appropriate website or file, you are all done!
   
   If not, revisit the draft and review the URL that was entered.

Hyperlink Targets

There are a few options for how a link will open available from the Target tab.

Protocol Options

If necessary, adjust the communication protocol settings. The default is http:// but other options include

• https://
• ftp://
• news://
• <other>

Linking from PolicyStat to a file on an Internal Shared Drive

The correct URL path format will need to be similar to this and use <other> as the protocol ->
file://shared-01/data/Committees/Safety%20Committee/Disaster%20Plan.pdf

Linking to PolicyStat Documents

When creating a hyperlink from one PolicyStat document to another or from any source to a PolicyStat document each new version of a policy is assigned a new PolicyStat ID number. When creating the hyperlink to a PolicyStat document (e.g.- https://yoursite.policystat.com/policy/123456/latest/), be sure to have "/latest" at the end of the URL to ensure the address will always redirect to the latest approved and active version of the policy.

A document pending approval can be linked by adding "/latest" to end of the URL of the pending document when embedding it into a document.  When the document is approved it will always redirect to the latest approved version as new versions are approved and replace it.

This article applies to the following user roles: