A policy is modified as a draft that's only accessible to admins. This draft must be published for an audience to be able to see it – just like Blissbook's documents. This allows you to make modifications in private, then launch when they're ready.
Because documents are currently the only way to distribute content to an audience (your employees), you must embed policies in a document and then publish that document in order for audience members to view & sign the policies.
Initial Launch of a Policy
The typical workflow for the initial launch of a policy looks like this:
Steps 1 & 2 (complete in any order)
When you're done (or close to done) editing a policy, embed it in the draft(s) of the document(s) you want it to appear in.
Note: If you created a policy by converting it from a text section, it's automatically embedded in the document right where the text section was.
When your policy is ready for your audience to view/sign, it's ready to be released. Releasing a policy changes its status to "Clean", which means the draft policy that you can edit in the policy library exactly matches the latest version that's been released or published. Note: If a policy has completed an approval workflow, it may be going from "Approved" to Clean, rather than "Drafting" to Clean.
Note: Both of the above actions can be done in bulk, so you don't have to do all this for every individual policy.
Step 3
When you're ready for your audience (employees) to view and sign an embedded and released policy, publish the document it's embedded in.
Changing a Policy
Once a policy and the document in which it's embedded is released, published, and live, the workflow is simplified.
When you publish a policy, it will be updated everywhere in all draft and live documents where it's embedded. You can also publish policies in bulk.
For policies that are embedded in at least one live document, the terminology changes from "Release" to "Publish" to differentiate between an action that will change what your audience sees (Publish) versus an action that is only visible to your policy admins (Release).
Confirmations
Any time you release or publish a policy, a confirmation box will tell you exactly what will happen. Here's what it looks like when you Release a draft policy that is not yet embedded in a document:
There are 16 different scenarios that can play out when you publish or release a policy based on the following:
(2 options) You can release or publish a policy individually or in bulk.
(8 options) A policy can be not embedded in any document or it can be embedded in:
one draft-only document (a document that's never been published);
one draft+live document (a document that's been published and the policy is still embedded in the draft);
one live-only document (the policy is in the live document but it's been removed from the draft);
multiple draft-only documents (documents that have never been published);
multiple draft+live documents (documents that have been published and the policy is still embedded in the draft);
multiple live-only documents (the policy is in the live documents but it's been removed from the drafts);
multiple documents with mixed draft-only, draft+live, or live-only statuses (the policy is in multiple documents in different states).
2 x 8 = 16 options!
You will see a different message for each of these 16 situations that also takes into account whether or not your draft document has ever been launched. Where applicable, the confirmation message will also include a link to the draft document the policy appears in and/or a link to a preview of what the policy will look like in a live document once it's published.
Still have questions? Contact our support team!