September 2009 - Posts

• Leaving Your policyIQ Legacy

  You’ve put a lot of time and effort into the implementation of policyIQ, so how can you ensure that your work will pay off and prove to be valuable for the organization in the long run? Configure with the future in mind. If you’re working on your policyIQ configuration or thinking of re-working your policyIQ configuration, it’s worth it to take the extra planning time and configure as if your policyIQ site will likely expand in the future—this will ensure that your current effort yields long lasting benefits and will save time when your organization decides to expand in the future. Here are some tips for making policyIQ’s configuration sustainable for the long term: Keep the recommended Setup structure intact and simply make those structures that you are not currently using “invisible” to end users.  Make your intentions plain to see! Have you noticed that you can add “Static Text” fields to your Templates? If you think that your end users might misinterpret the intended use of certain fields or a template or not know what to do with the Page once they’ve finished developing it, you can use Static Text fields to provide instruction directly on the Pages. You can even choose to make these Static Text fields NOT Viewable in Home—so that they’re helpful to the content creators, but not visible in the Published versions in Home. Keep it simple: take care to not have “too many cooks in the kitchen”—in other words, don’t grant several different users administrative rights to the site’s Setup. Do not overcomplicate maintenance by having custom Viewers rights on each of your Folders. You can also keep it simple, or minimize the necessary maintenance effort in the future if you add Group names to the local rights of your Pages or Forms instead of individuals’ names. Avoid painting yourself into a corner: Use the standard or default Roles for your users. If you find that you have a need for a custom Role, create a new one and enable the desired permissions rather than making a change in the permissions to one of the previously standard Roles—this will make it easier for other administrators and policyIQ support to understand and maintain the site going forward. If you think that your configuration has already crept so that you’re not sure what would be ideal for the future, give us a call! We’d be happy to review your configuration with you. Speaking of open to interpretation… What do you see? Do you see the profile of an old woman looking down or the profile of a young woman looking back over her right shoulder? Maybe you see something altogether different! Most people, when given a picture, word or scenario to consider, will develop their own interpretation that is not exactly the same as the next person’s. For this reason, we recommend capturing your configuration decisions in writing. We even provide the framework for you to do so in the policyIQ Reference Guide. Regardless of whether or not you choose to use our framework, we encourage you to: Document your intended purpose for policyIQ, Document the types of content that you’re capturing, Document your definition for each of the fields and Write out the procedures for your end users: Who initiates new Pages? How should they link Pages? What Folders do they put them in? What steps do they take to ensure the proper review takes place? Keeping such a “policyIQ Diary” will be very helpful to your organization in the future. And be sure to make all of this valuable information easy to find—you can put it into a “policyIQ Training Manual” or a similar Folder within your policyIQ site! This will ensure that all of the effort that your documentation team put into the configuration decisions will be easily transferable to new users and to your replacements once you win the lottery and move to that tropical paradise of your dreams!   Posted Sep 30 2009, 06:12 AM by stepheniebuehrle with no comments Filed under: Training, configuration, administration, maintenance

• SOX 302 in policyIQ – Certifiably Simple

  A common and easy use of policyIQ is to collect certifications for Sarbanes-Oxley Section 302 compliance.  For companies already using policyIQ to manage SOX Risks, Controls and Testing, expanding the scope to include 302 certifications is a natural step.  But even if you are not already using policyIQ for your SOX work, consider the savings – in both cost and time – that can be gained by putting your certification process online in policyIQ. What is SOX 302 certification? On a quarterly basis companies will send up to a few dozen questions to managers and other individuals, across all of their departments, to be completed before the CFO and CEO certify to the financial statements. These questions are often similar to the Audit Representation Letter that an external audit firm will collect from a company’s top financial officer prior to issuing an audit opinion.  That letter asks questions about subsequent events, significant changes to accounting policies, and other material events.  In fact, in the first year of SOX we saw a number of companies copy that letter and get it signed by various department managers before the CFO or Controller signed the copy for the auditors.  That process has evolved over time to where now a typical employee will answer two types of questions: those general questions that are answered by everyone, and those that are specific to their position (i.e. HR will answer some HR-specific questions).  Our own company, Resources Global Professionals, has over 100 people across the world answer 10 or more questions for our quarterly certification. How would I go about setting this up in policyIQ? Using policyIQ to collect these answers is a straightforward use of our Forms functionality. Create a Form Template for each set of questions, organized by topic.  For example, our Compliance with Laws and Regulations Form Template has 3 questions that everyone answers such as: As a manager, I am responsible (along with other members of management) for my location(s)' compliance with all laws and regulations. I am not aware of the company's violation of any laws or regulations during the most recently completed fiscal quarter, or from the last day of the completed fiscal quarter until today.  I am not aware that the company has received any communication from the government or other regulatory agencies regarding an investigation of the Company's operations. Assign each Form Template to the appropriate user groups.  Remember also that the group you will assign to a Form Template will answer all the questions on the Template – so when creating your Form Templates per #1 above you should group questions by both topic and by what users are going to be answering them. Add those Form Templates to a Form List to make assigning them each quarter just a few clicks.  When you are ready, Run the Form List and then monitor your answers! Remember, users only need to be Standard users, not Advanced, to be able to answer these questions.  Do you have some best practices or recommendations? A number of policyIQ clients are already using Forms to manage their SOX 302 process, and there are a few lessons to learn from their experience. Word the questions for consistent “positive” responses.  For ease of reporting, most companies will write their questions consistently so that it is easier to identify answers that indicate issues.  For example, at Resources Global, questions are written with Agree/Disagree answers, where Agree is an “affirmative” answer and Disagree indicates a potential problem. Use Groups. Use groups and not individual names if possible, even if you have a group like “HR Director” with only one person in it.  When your organization experiences turnover, you just assign the user to the appropriate group and you don’t have to change any of the Form Templates.  Build fields for issue resolution.  Create one or two fields on each Form Template that can be seen only by the person administering the questions.  For example, at the end of each Form Template you can create a Dropdown field with choices for “Issue reported” or “Not an issue”, and then a Rich Text field for “Follow-up Comments”.  If a person provides a negative answer to one of the questions, these fields can be used to document the investigation and to identify whether it is an issue that the CFO or others need to be made aware of. Is your organization already using policyIQ for SOX 302 certifications?  Share any additional tips or advice in our comments.  If you’d like to learn more about using policyIQ for SOX 302, please feel free to comment or contact support to speak with one of our team members. Posted Sep 29 2009, 08:43 AM by roccotarasi with no comments Filed under: SOX, best practices, configuration, 302, forms, setup

• Coming soon to a policyIQ site near you!

  The policyIQ elves* are busy working on the finishing touches for version 6.5.  As they polish up the next release, we would like to take this opportunity to give you all a sneak peek at what is coming. Color, style – and faster response times! policyIQ is all about managing your content – so when it comes to improving the performance and style in policyIQ, what better place to start than with a Page?  We’ve redesigned the Page to make it more efficient and a little ‘prettier’.  By splitting the page up into tabs, we’ve been able to increase overall performance and provide you with a more streamlined view. When it comes to editing content, the new design takes out the extra steps (and extra seconds) associated with pop-up windows – putting all of your edit features directly on the page. Fewer pop-ups Throughout the application, we’re working to streamline activities.   Where an alert or question is necessary, we have been changing the pop-up windows to use different technology that will be faster and less intrusive.  Stay tuned!  While we’ve made many changes for version 6.5, there are more areas of the product that we will be updating in coming releases. A picture speaks a thousand words It’s no secret that charts and graphs speak more powerfully to many audiences.  Executives and busy managers want an “at a glance” summary of essential information; charts offer a great way to provide that information. In version 6.5, we’ve implemented charts and graphs into your policyIQ Dashboard and given you a second Charts and Graphs dashboard in the Reports module.  Several standard charts will be available, including a breakdown of your site’s content by Template or Folder, a line graph of log-in activity, and a chart of volume and age of expired content. We will also be offering a new service to create custom charts and graphs.  If you have data in policyIQ that you’d like to see graphically represented in policyIQ – we can build one.   Import!  Import! Almost every policyIQ client finds themselves importing a large volume of content into the application.  It might be a task you complete once when you start using policyIQ, or it might be an on-going activity done frequently.  If you have been responsible for content imports, you’ve probably become big fans of our support team over the past year – as they do a great job of getting your content imported quickly.  But even if you love the work they do, we know that most of you would prefer to do it yourself.  With version 6.5, the policyIQ application provides you with the ability to Import content from your Excel spreadsheets.  (Don’t worry – we’ll be offering some training classes shortly after version 6.5 is released – so you’ll get to be just as proficient as our support team!) We’re really excited about our next release.  There are some new features that we are sure you are going to love – and the increased efficiencies will reduce time spent on every day policyIQ tasks.  Don’t take our word for it, though.  We asked a few of your fellow policyIQ users to review the new design – and their feedback was overwhelmingly positive.  (And they gave us some great suggestions for making the new design even better!) Look for more information coming soon about the release of version 6.5! *It’s probably best if you don’t tell the policyIQ development team that I referred to them as “elves”. Posted Sep 23 2009, 10:50 AM by chrisburd with no comments Filed under: reports, features, charts and graphs, releases, import

• An even “smarter”community? We’d like to think so.

  Without a doubt, fall has always been my favorite time of year.  There’s something about shorter days and cooler air that inspires us to start new projects and look at things with a fresh perspective.  This fall, the policyIQ team has been inspired to try something new and start the smartercommunity Blog. What will the smartercommunity blog do for me? In the smartercommunity blog, we will discuss upcoming policyIQ news and events, give you tips to use the product most effectively, and share success stories to inspire you.  We’ll talk about those issues that you are facing every day - in policyIQ and in your business - and give you some ideas to solve for them. Get to know the bloggers I have been given the distinct honor of writing our first blog post, but the smartercommunity blog will truly be a team effort.  If you want to know more about any of us, check out the “About” section below each post for a bio of the blogger.  Earn extra points for participation! Every community is strengthened by the participation of its members - and the policyIQ smartercommunity is no different.  Add a comment to a blog post - even if it is just to let us know that you found the information useful.  If you have some different insight to add, please share it with your fellow policyIQ users.  Do you have something to share that doesn't fit the blog topic?  Take it to the Forums and post your own thread.  Ask for feedback and advice - or share a great idea that is working for you! Add our RSS feed to your policyIQ site or find us from the log-in page! Don't want to bookmark yet another site?  No worries - you will always be able to find us from the log-in screen of policyIQ.  Or add the smartercommunity blog's RSS feed to your policyIQ site - and share it with all of your policyIQ users.  (The RSS URL is http://smartercommunity.policyiq.com/blogs/MainFeed.aspx - also available in the right navigation of the blog.) We are looking forward to blogging with you! Posted Sep 23 2009, 10:22 AM by chrisburd with no comments Filed under: community