How Do I Add and Manage my Organization's Policies in my KnowBe4 Console?

The Policy Management feature in your Security Awareness Training platform allows you to store, distribute, and track the various acknowledgments and agreements required of the employees in your organization.

You can use training campaigns in your KnowBe4 console to assign and distribute your organization's policies. This gives you the ability to track which users have acknowledged the policies and how much time they spent reviewing the policies. You can even set an optional minimum review time for users to spend reading policies.

Jump to: 

Adding PDF Policies
Adding URL Policies
Editing Policies
Assigning Policies
Monitoring Policy Acknowledgments
User Experience
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

Adding PDF Policies

You can upload your organization's policies in a PDF or URL format. To create a new PDF policy, log in to your console, navigate to the Training section, and click on the Policies tab. From there, click the + Add Policy button and select PDF.

PDF Policy Creation Screen

1. Policy Title: Add the title of your policy or agreement. As a best practice, we recommend adding the policy version and/or creation date to the title. This title will display on the interface your users will see when reading the policy.
2. Status: Select the status of the policy. See here for a list of the available statuses and what they mean.
3. Minimum Time Required: (optional) You can specify a minimum number of minutes that users are required to spend reviewing the policy before having the ability to acknowledge it.
4. Allow Download: (optional) If you enable this checkbox your users will have the option to download the policy from the Policy Viewer interface.
5. Description: Here you can provide a description of this policy for future reference.
6. + Add Language: Click this button to add a version of your policy. The first language that you add to the policy will be the default selection for all users. See below for more details. 
7. Create: Once you've added all necessary language versions, click this button to save the policy.

PDF Add Language Screen

1. Policy Name: Create a name for your policy that can be displayed to your users.
2. Policy File: Use the Browse button to upload a PDF file.
3. Acceptance Requirements: Choose what type of acknowledgment you want to require of your users. You can require that they acknowledge each page of your policy or only the final page.
4. Language: Select the language that the policy is written in. The first language that you add to the policy will be the default selection for all users.
5. Acceptance Text: (optional) This text is displayed next to the checkbox. This checkbox must be selected in order for your user to accept the policy.
6. Per Page Acceptance Text: (optional) This text is displayed on all pages of the policy except the final page.
7. Final Page Acceptance Text: (optional) This text is displayed at the bottom of the Policy Viewer interface, on the final page of the policy. This text will accompany the acknowledgment checkbox users are required to check.
8. Save: Click this button to save this language version of the policy.

Policies can be edited to add additional versions. Although, once a policy is in a campaign, original policy files should not be changed to a revised version. See the next section for more information.

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Adding URL Policies

You can upload your organization's policies in a PDF or URL format. To create a new URL policy, log in to your console, navigate to the Training section, and click on the Policies tab. From there, click the + Add Policy button and select URL.

URL Policy Creation Screen

1. Policy Title: Add the title of your policy or agreement. As a best practice, we recommend adding the policy version and/or creation date to the title. This title will display on the interface your users will see when reading the policy.
2. Status: Select the status of the policy. See here for a list of the available statuses and what they mean.
3. Required Review: (optional) Requires the user to open the URL before accepting the policy.
4. Description: Here you can provide a description of this policy for future reference.
5. + Add Language: Click this button to add a version of your policy. The first language that you add to the policy will be the default selection for all users. See below for more details. 
6. Create: Once you've added all necessary language versions, click this button to save the policy.

URL Add Language Screen

1. Policy Name: Create a name for your policy that can be displayed to your users.
2. Policy URL: Enter the URL for your policy.
   

   Note:

   Only Fully Qualified Domain Names (FQDN) are accepted. Please use the complete URL, not a shortened version.

3. Language: Select the language that the policy is written in. 
4. Acceptance Text: (optional) This text is displayed next to the checkbox. This checkbox must be selected in order for your user to accept the policy.
5. Save: Click this button to save this language version of the policy.

Policies can be edited to add additional versions. Although, once a policy is in a campaign, original policy files should not be changed to a revised version. See the next section for more information.

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Editing Policies

After a policy has been created, you can edit the policy or add additional language versions as needed. Edits to the policy take effect immediately and users who are already assigned the policy will be able to see your changes the next time they view it.

You can edit a policy by clicking the drop-down arrow to the far right of the policy title, as shown below.

Policies Tab

Policy Statuses

Edit Policy Screen

From the policy editing page, you can edit the general policy details, add additional language versions, edit existing language versions, and change the default policy language option. The default language is the first shown in the drop-down menu that users see before opening the policy. See an example of the drop-down menu here.

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Assigning Policies

Once you've added one or more policies to your account, you will assign and distribute the policy to your users by creating a training campaign.

To create a training campaign for your policy, navigate to the Training section of your console, and click on the Campaigns tab. Then, click the + Create Training Campaign button.

You can set up the training campaign as you normally would. See our Training Campaigns article for details.

You have the ability to assign both policies and training content in the same campaign. The "Content" drop-down menu will contain two sections: Courses and Policies. Choose any combination of content to include in your campaign.

See our FAQ: Can I arrange the order of the content I assign through training campaigns? 

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Monitoring Policy Acknowledgments 

Once a campaign has started, you can monitor the status of all user acknowledgments as well as any training courses you may have included in your campaign. Click on the campaign name under the Campaigns tab to view the details of that campaign. For more information see the Monitoring Campaigns section of our Training Campaigns and Course Management article.

To view detailed information on each user's status in the campaign, click on the Users tab. 

From this page, you can view enrollment dates, time spent on the policy, the user's status, and more. See our User Training Progress article for more information.

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User Experience 

If you've set up campaign notifications to send to your end users (for example, reminding them to acknowledge your organization's policies) they'll use the link in the notification email to access the console.

As an account administrator, you have the ability to customize the notifications that you can automate when setting up a campaign. These notifications can be sent to users, users' managers, and account administrators at a frequency that you choose. See here for more general information on campaign notifications, and see here for more information on customizing training notifications.

Once users have logged into their account, they'll see the active campaigns they're enrolled in and can click Start to open and view their policy assignment.  

The policy will open in a new window, so users must have their pop-up blocker turned off, or allow the window to open when prompted.

If you've added multiple language versions of the policy, users can click the Flag drop-down button to choose their native language, before clicking Start Policy (see below).  

Users will review the policy in the Policy Viewer, shown below.

Policy Viewer

Users will navigate through the policy by clicking the forward navigation arrow. If you've required users to agree to each page of the policy, they'll have to click the acceptance checkbox before proceeding to the next page. Otherwise, users will navigate through the entire policy, then click the acceptance checkbox once they've read the final page of the policy. After clicking the acceptance checkbox, users must close the Policy Viewer window in order to receive a Completed status for their policy acknowledgment.

If you've enabled the policy Allow Download feature, users can click the Download button at the top of the page to save a copy of the PDF file.

If you've assigned Required Review Minutes to a policy, users must spend this amount of time reading the policy before they will be able to accept it. If users attempt to click the final acknowledgment checkbox prior to the time requirement, they will be prompted with a warning message, shown below.

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Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

1. Question: After assigning a policy through a campaign, I added an additional language version to the policy. Will users in the campaign be able to view the policy in the additional language?

   Answer: Yes. Any edits made to the policy will be automatically reflected in the policy campaign.

2. Question: Can you preview all language versions of the policy?

   Answer: Only the default version of the policy will be available for preview in the console. If you'd like to preview the remaining versions, temporarily change the default version of the policy. See the Editing Policies section of this article for more info.

3. Question: Can I arrange the order of the content I assign through training campaigns?

   Answer: Yes. From the Create New Training Campaign page, drag and drop the content to the desired order, as shown below. When the users log in to complete their training and/or policies, they'll see the content in this order.

   

4. Question: Why can't I see/select my policy when creating a training campaign?

   Answer: Ensure you've published the policy under the Training > Policies tab before creating a new campaign. To do so, click on the drop-down arrow to the far right of the policy name, then click Edit. Enable the Publish toggle and save the policy.

5. Question: Why don't the "Users who did not acknowledge their course policies" and "Users who acknowledged their course policies" reports under the Training > Reports tab include my policy campaign users?

   Answer: These specific reports are related to the alternative method of mandating policy acknowledgments through your console. You can find more information on this type of Policy Acknowledgement here.
   
   If you would like reports for your training campaigns that include policy PDF files, see the Monitoring Policy Acknowledgments portion of this article.

6. Question: Can I assign Security Roles to an individual that I want to handle policy management, distribution, and acknowledgment?

   Answer: Yes. You can add one or more users to a group in your console for the purpose of assigning the necessary Security Roles for policy management. See our Security Roles article for more information.

7. Question: Is there a maximum file size for policy PDFs?

   Answer: No. However, the system may time out if files are excessively large. If this happens, try reducing the file size and uploading again.

8. Question: I have links in my policy and I can't click them. Why aren't the links clickable in my policy viewer?

   Answer: Are you using a Mac? If so, you must use PDFs that have been created in Adobe Acrobat if you want to have clickable links for your users within your policy.

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