Throughout the month of August, our theme is "Communication" - and one of your key avenues for communicating to your audience in policyIQ is the Dashboard.  The policyIQ Dashboard communicates tasks that a user must complete (such as Forms Assigned and In Progress, or Checked Out to Me), reports that a manager might frequently run (such as Favorite Reports), or the status of the database to a Site Administrator (in the Administrative Overview).

How do you communicate critical updates?

One of the most critical types of communication is often overlooked.  If a policy, procedure, control or other type of critical content is updated, how do you communicate that update to the right people? 

Let's say, for example, that we've implemented a new Time and Expense System.  With the release of the T&E system, our organization has updated the Time Reporting Procedures and wants to be sure that every employee has read those new procedures.  The procedures are stored in policyIQ (of course!).   

We could simply send out an email to all employees - including the new Time Reporting Procedures as an attachment.  But how can we be sure that our employees have read them?  We could request read receipts, but we know that many employees send automatic read receipts even if they don't glance at the email.  We need something better!

Publish, Email and Set Required Viewing!

policyIQ offers a simple way of communicating those updates - and tracking who has read the item - on the policyIQ Dashboard's Pages to Read section.  Recently published content can appear on the user's Dashboard - and will continue to appear until he/she has clicked to open the page.  (We tried to implement "brain scan" technology to ensure that the users were actually reading the page, but sadly we're only able to confirm that he/she has opened it.  We'll keep working on reading brain waves, though!)

How does it get there?  When publishing any page in policyIQ, the publisher can decide whether the updated content is "required" to be read by any or all of the Viewers.  If "required," the Page will appear on the selected users' Dashboards.  Simple as that. 

As much as we'd like to believe that your employees are logging into policyIQ every single day, we know that just isn't the case.  The publisher can also choose to send an email message, which will go out as soon as the page is published to all those individuals selected.  He can customize the Subject and Message, alerting users that critical updates to those procedures must be reviewed by all employees - and the link to the policyIQ site will always be included in the email!

What makes that better than sending the updates via email?

Not only does policyIQ provide you with the mechanism to communicate the updates, but your content administrators can then go into the item and review the list of users who have (or have not) actually opened it!  Just open the page and go to History à View Usage.  There you'll find a list of all users who can view, a designation of those who were "required" to view it, and the last time that the user actually opened the page.

What if we have TOO MANY Pages to Read?

Believe it or not, this is not an uncommon issue.  Some policyIQ users may have published every update as "required reading."  Like the boy who cried wolf, the Pages to Read section just doesn't get the appropriate attention because there are simply too many items that are not important.

Get a fresh start!  Ask our support team for some assistance, and we can give your entire organization a fresh start on Pages to Read.  We can perform a one-time "remove all" procedure to remove everything from Pages to Read and give you a fresh start.