As standard, Policy Manager has two statuses that policies can be moved between: Draft and Distribution.
The application functions perfectly well with these; however, it is possible to set up an approval process and add two additional statuses between draft and distribution.
This is an optional feature and does not need to be used unless relevant for your team.
This guide will cover how to set up and use an approval process in Policy Manager
Setting up an approval process
Application administrators of Policy Manager can add and manage the two extra approval statuses from the admin side. (Applications > Admin > Policy Manager > Status details)
Please note: The two statuses after 'Distribution' status can be used, but are not part of the approval process and can instead be used as extra archiving review stages.
1. Create new approval statuses
Consider what you want the approval steps to be and enter these into the 'Status details' tab between 'draft' and 'distribution'.
Check the box in line with the row to make the fields editable.
Click 'submit' to apply and save the new statuses.
Once you are happy with your new statuses, click 'Submit' to save them.
2. Update permissions across policies
Now that the new approval stages exist, they can be applied to policies created as new or being edited.
Users need to be given permissions to the new statuses to allow them to see and move policies between them.
- Default policy permissions
The most important place to update this first is in the 'default policy permissions' on the admin side by an administrator.
Here, the corresponding permission for each new status will be listed.
Your administrators need to make sure the appropriate users/roles/groups are entered here, given these new rights and this is saved.
This ensures all new policies added from this point on have these permissions pull through, and so will have users who can move them through the approval process (as required)
- What to do for pre-existing policies
It may be fine that all new policies moving forward can be moved through these statuses and exisitng policies will not be involved.
However, if you want policies already in existence to be involved, users/roles/groups will need to be given the new status permission as well.
There is no bulk policy permission update facility; instead, these updates are manually applied per policy.
Administrators of Policy Manager or users with 'Edit policy' permission can edit each policy and update its permissions to include users/roles/groups in the new status permissions.
Once applied, existing polices can be edited and moved through the statuses as needed by users with the corresponding permissions to them.
How the process works in practice
1. When a new policy is created (or edited) the new statuses are available.
2. Users with the appropriate permission can move a policy between the statuses
3. Once a policy is put into an approval status, the users with the corresponding permission to the policy will be notified, requesting their approval.
4. In the policy, they will be presented with the option to either accept or reject the policy, and the option to also leave a comment (this is mandatory when rejecting the policy).
5. Administrators can check to see that all approvals have been given and move the policy to the next stage
6. Repeat for the next approval status until the policy is moved to 'distribution' and has been made live, or back to 'draft'.
