October 2009 - Posts

• Version 6.5 will be here before you know it!

  As you may have heard by now, the policyIQ team is hard at work -- rolling out version 6.5. Wondering what we’re going to be introducing? Here is just a sample of the items you’ll find in the new release: Improved Organization – one of the first things you’ll notice in version 6.5 is our redesigned way of organizing information on screens, including Pages, Forms, and Templates. Information is now grouped logically and made available across intuitive tabs. When you open a Page of content, for example, you will find it’s much easier now to locate exactly what you’re looking for. Want to review field data? That’s on the Content tab. Want to see who’s responsible for Approving a Page? Check the Page Security tab. Want to view Attachments and Links? There’s a tab for that too.   Attachment List – as a Site Administrator, have you ever wanted to know exactly how many attachments have been uploaded in your policyIQ site? Are you concerned that old attachments may be taking up space on old Pages or Forms? Well, you’re going to love our new Attachment List! This new feature - available to Site Administrators in the Setup module - will give you a comprehensive view of all the attachments in your site, including file size, with the ability to go directly to the Pages or Forms on which these attachments reside.   Charts and Graphs – with this new feature, you’ll now be able to visualize your policyIQ data in more meaningful ways. You’ll find six standard charts waiting for you – free of charge - in your Reports module after this release has been rolled out to your site. We’re also going to give you the option of adding these new charts to your Dashboard – making it convenient for you to view this representation of your data each time you log into policyIQ. And if you’d like to take the design of these charts and graphs into unexplored territory, we’re going to offer custom chart/graph creation as a premium service.    Import Tool – would you like to upload massive amounts of Controls or Policies, but don’t want to step through the creation process one item at a time? Our new Import feature will make your life much easier. This new tool is going to let Site Administrators perform bulk uploads of policyIQ content from spreadsheets. This is such a great feature, we’re even hosting a special 30-minute training session, just to show you how to use it! Click here to register.     Read More These are just a handful of the great new features and improvements included in version 6.5. To view the full release notes, click here.     When Do I Get My Upgrade? So now that you’re all geared up for the new release, you’re probably wondering when you can expect to see these updates on your site, right? The policyIQ team will be rolling out version 6.5 over a roughly two-week period, starting Sunday, November 1. As always, upgrades will be performed during off-hours, to minimize any interruptions.  Keep an eye out for version 6.5, and don’t hesitate to contact our Support team with any questions.   Posted Oct 29 2009, 08:27 AM by scottpalermo with no comments Filed under: feature requests, Training, features, charts and graphs, releases, import

• Working on workpapers: policyIQ and Internal Audit

  Internal auditors are frequent users of policyIQ for Sarbanes-Oxley compliance, but many audit departments also choose policyIQ to manage all their audit work outside of SOX. What makes policyIQ a good tool for audit workpapers?  Even though it isn’t designed specifically for workpaper tracking, it has many of the features necessary to manage that content effectively: Create as many customizable templates as you need (Audit Plan, Audit Test, Scoping Document, Audit Finding, Management Recommendation, Meeting Minutes, etc.) Check-in/out workflow to collaborate, assign, review and approve content Change history and version history Expiration date reminders and due dates on assigned tasks Flexible folder organization with necessary security Dashboard to-do list Robust reporting with custom fields, logic operators (AND, OR, NOT), different outputs, and Excel exports Hosted delivery accessible to your external auditors policyIQ’s strength has always been the ability to configure it for many different uses, including SOX, policies & procedures, contract management, account reconciliations, regulatory tracking, ERM, and in this case for internal audit workpapers.  It may not have all the bells and whistles of a system dedicated just to audit workpapers – but if you are already using policyIQ for another purpose and don’t have a good internal audit workpapers system, it can be a free (or at very worst a low cost) solution to consider.  Checkout our whitepaper describing one way to configure policyIQ to manage internal audit workpapers.  Posted Oct 15 2009, 12:27 PM by roccotarasi with no comments Filed under: workpapers, internal audit

• Training - Serving your policyIQ users of tomorrow!

  What’s the best training for your team?  No implementation is complete without delivering appropriate and effective training to the various types of users. Think about your organization’s reason for using policyIQ. Ask yourself, “Self, what types of users will interface with policyIQ?” The level of detail in your plan will be dictated by the level of usage at your organization.  Clients with a small project team using policyIQ may not find it necessary to organize a complex training plan, while a client with over 10,000 users across the world will need to have a more detailed set of steps in place early in the process. Usually, each client will adapt their own unique processes and procedures together with the tools that are provided by the policyIQ team (PowerPoint slides, Help guide, live and recorded training sessions, etc) to create a complete training program that is appropriate for their organization.  Let’s explore some of the training tools and tips that the policyIQ Team has created for you. You will notice when you go to our recorded trainings page that the middle column displays the recordings in the order that we recommend for various user types: (http://www.policyiq.com/training.asp) Read-Only Users: Your Read-Only users will be able to take advantage of policyIQ’s streamlined interface with minimal guidance.   While we anticipate that training will not be necessary for Read-Only users, they may wish to review the "Introduction to policyIQ" recorded training session. If applicable, Read-Only users may wish to access the Help guide (link to Help is in the top right corner of each policyIQ window) and read more about the WhistleBlower module, policyIQ’s issue management system, and learn how to submit a case. Standard Users:   Standard Users may have a range of policyIQ responsibilities including locating specific content (procedures, specifications, controls); monitoring unit performance or status; responding to compliance questions; or submitting necessary forms for services, equipment, benefits or other notification. In addition to those recommendations for Read-Only Users, Standard Users may wish to review the "Subscribe to RSS Feeds" recorded training to learn how to add feeds to your Home view. If you are required to submit Forms (302 Certifications or HR Annual Policy Sign-offs, for example) you may wish to review the portion of the “Forms – Overview” session that looks at Forms from the respondent’s perspective. Advanced Users: Content and Form Managers: Of course, you can read about how to add new content, edit content, move content through the workflow, create policy sign-offs, manage 302 certifications and much more in the "’How to’ by Subject" manual of policyIQ’s online Help guide. If you’re a visual learner, like I am, I’d suggest reviewing the "Workflow - Overview" recorded training, at minimum. The “Forms – Overview” session is also a must for your administrators and approvers of Forms. You can see all of the trainings that we have recommended under “Content Managers” and “Form Managers” on our training page, but I have to emphasize…I really wish that everyone could realize the power of policyIQ Reports! I uber-strongly encourage you to review the appropriate reports trainings.   Site (Global) Administrators: Sure, there are training materials that I can point you toward…we have some great recordings and we think there’s no substitute for a complete “policyIQ Reference Guide”. If you plan to present some of the training highlights to your users in PowerPoint, we’ve already done at least half of the work for you (you can get to all of these materials from within your Help guide). However, if you only remember one thing from this post, please remember to take advantage of your partnership with your policyIQ Account Manager! It’s their job to be a good listener, to understand your implementation goals and to guide you toward the materials and plans that will best serve your team. Have you owned policyIQ for years, you feel like it’s in need of revamping and you don’t know who your Account Manager is? Just ask us and we’ll help you to connect and get the re-launch ball rolling! (You can contact us at Support@policyIQ.com.)  If you remember two things from this post, remember to “can it if you can”! (This might arguably be the most important thing, but I have to put it second to developing a relationship with your Account Manager!) What I mean is, capture your training program in a way that makes it easy to repeat or to share with new users in the future. If you’re delivering a live session, video-tape it! Keep hard—or better yet, soft copies of your training materials. And for the love of all that is good and easy to hand-off when you move on to the next big adventure, keep your written procedures for end users in an easily accessible location…how about in policyIQ?! If all of this is way more than you care to think about or take on with your limited time and resources, let us develop and deliver a custom training for you! We can map out a live session or create a custom training recording that is the perfect fit for your needs—contact us if you’d like more information on custom training development.       Posted Oct 08 2009, 09:34 AM by stepheniebuehrle with no comments Filed under: tips, Training, Custom, reports, best practices, configuration, setup, administration

• Work the system: Tips for High Impact Feature Requests!

  Some of my best ideas come to me in the shower.  I wouldn’t admit that out loud to anyone, but I know that I’m not alone.  In fact, someone has even come up with a shower “note tablet” to capture those thoughts before they wash down the drain along with your shampoo.  (Apparently the key is waterproof crayons.) Wherever it is that you do your best thinking, many of you have come up with some great ideas for ways to improve policyIQ.  We receive lots of feature requests, suggestions and ideas – and like all organizations, we have limited time and resources.  When deciding what to work on next, we rate each request by how much impact it will have and how much effort is required to make it happen.   When you request a new feature, in a way you are trying to sell the idea to us.  You want us to put your request to the top of the list.  1.) Don’t tell us how you want to get there – tell us where you want to end up Sage advice that I received from a mentor early in my career – and I still hear those words every time I make a request.  For example, rather than asking for the ability to rename the standard Expiration Date field, explain that you would like alert messages to be sent 30 days before the Renewal Date on your Contract pages.  There are a number of benefits to this approach: a. Sometimes there’s a work-around or a very similar option that already exists, but you might not have known about.  We love offering immediate solutions when we can! b. There may be a completely different way to solve for the same issue – one that will benefit even more users.  (More impact!) c. We get to better understand how you are using policyIQ, which will benefit everyone in the end. 2.) Tell us how you are doing it today “I am using the Expiration Date field for our contract Renewal Dates, because I need to have the contract owners alerted 30 days before the Renewal Date.  However, I had to add some instructional text to the Contract Template to explain, as ‘Expiration Date’ means something completely different in the world of contract management.” If you can help us understand what you are doing today – whether it is an existing process or the lack of an existing process – we can better wrap our heads around how we can help you.  3.) Give us the bottom line “If we were able to tie alert messages to the Renewal Date on a contract, we could roll out policyIQ to 20 additional contract managers in our organization.” Let’s face it – it’s in our best interest to add features to policyIQ that will sell more licenses and keep you using policyIQ for a longer time.  Tell us how a feature will affect your use of policyIQ – either by making you a happier (and therefore long-term) customer, or by expanding usage into new areas of your business.  4.) Ignore all of this advice – and just ask! If you’ve read this and thought “Man, submitting a feature request is much more difficult than I thought it was”, then please feel free to ignore everything I just said.  Many of our best feature requests came from informal conversations and questions about the best way to set something up.  You don’t need to formalize your requests – you just need to submit them. Since the first version of policyIQ back in 2001, our team has depended on user feedback to help set the direction of development in policyIQ – and we want you to keep those ideas coming!  Posted Oct 06 2009, 09:27 AM by chrisburd with 1 comment(s) Filed under: tips, feature requests, features