Objective:

• To understand applicability groups

Environment:

• PolicyStat systems with multiple sites

Additional Information:

Establishing and modifying Applicability groups is an action taken by PolicyStat Staff, but it is helpful to understand what Applicability groups are to understand how they can be beneficial for managing content across a system or network of sites.

If a multi-site applicability group is applied to a document, the logo image for the site the document is viewed in will display if no document settings are specified for the applicability group (PolicyStat Support sets that). If document settings (the logo and the header field/date labels from a site)  are specified for an applicability group, the defined site logo will always display regardless of the site the user views in. In other words if a corporate logo is needed for certain documents. PolicyStat support can set the group to always use the logo as defined in a particular site.

Answer:

Applicability Groups: Defined

As the name implies, Applicability groups define which site or sites a policy applies to. Each PolicyStat site is a part of an Applicability group, even if it is a single site.

For example, Lonestar Hospital is a single, standalone PolicyStat site without any connected sites. The Applicability group is just Lonestar Hospital.

Connected / System Sites

If multiple PolicyStat sites are connected through a system or network, policy content can be shared across multiple sites without creating new copies on each site. When changes are made to the content from one location, the changes reflect automatically in all instances of the policy.

The most common Applicability group is a System-Wide group, but smaller groupings can also be generated if needed.

Example: Havlik Regional Health 

For example, the Havlik Regional Health system has 5 PolicyStat sites:

• North Hospital (https://hrh-north.fake-policystat.com)
• West Hospital (https://hrh-west.fake-policystat.com)
• South Hospital (https://hrh-south.fake-policystat.com)
• Memorial (https://hrh-memorial.fake-policystat.com)
• South-East Hospital (https://hrh-south-east.fake-policystat.com)

Policies that apply only to the lone site can be placed in their respective Applicability group. For example, Havlik South policies are placed in the South Hospital Applicability group, and those policies will not be visible on any of the four other PolicyStat sites.

Policies that apply to system-wide would be placed into the HRH - System Wide Applicability group. Changes made to the content of these policies will automatically update the content where the policy appears on each site across the system.

Region-specific policies can be placed in the Eastern Region Applicability group. As the Eastern group contains the Memorial Hospital and South-East Hospital sites, policies in this group will be visible on both sites, but not visible on any of the other three hospital sites.

For more on selecting an Applicability for a policy, see this article.