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Policy workflow

Maintaining and organizing your organization's policies can be time-consuming and involves bringing together data from many sources. Follow the policy process outlined here to learn how to use Hyperproof to manage policies for your organization. Depending on your role and associated permissions, you may be unable to access all of the functionality shown here. See Policy roles and permissions for more information.

Required workflow

  1. Create and edit your policies in an external document system such as Google Docs or Microsoft 365.

  2. Assign policy owners, stakeholders, and subject matter experts to work on the content of each policy.

  3. Add your policies to Hyperproof. See Adding policies.

  4. Add users to the policies they need to manage. See Adding a user to a policy.

  5. Edit policy details as needed. See Editing policy details.

  6. Add a policy version to each policy. A version contains a revision of a policy document and associated data. See Understanding policy versions and Adding a policy version.

  7. If you have approved policy documents that are currently in effect, upload an effective policy document to each policy version. See Understanding policy versions and Adding a policy version.

  8. If the policy is being edited and reviewed, create a version of the draft document. If the document is in a cloud storage location, you can enable LiveSync to update that version when the draft is modified in the external editor. See Adding a policy document.

  9. When a draft policy document has been reviewed and is ready for approval, set the version of the document to the Approval stage. This launches the approval process. See Managing policy life cycle and Policy approvals.

  10. Review the policies assigned to you and determine whether there are issues or if they can be approved. See Reviewing policies and Viewing a policy document.

  11. Approve any policies that are completed. When a policy version is approved, Hyperproof generates proof of the approval and automatically attaches it to the appropriate version. See Policy approvals.

  12. If a version's approval status is set to Changes requested, edit your policy document and submit it for approval again. See Understanding policy versions.

  13. When a policy version has been approved, set the stage to Effective to indicate that the policy is now being enforced. The previous effective policy is automatically moved to the Retired stage and displays on the Details tab. See Managing policy life cycle.

  14. Add proof to your policy versions to provide evidence that employees have been trained, and have read and agreed to each policy. See Adding proof to a policy version.

Advanced workflow options

  1. Link policies to the controls that implement them. See Linking controls to a policy.

  2. Add issues for any policies that require exceptions and assign those issues to one or more users to be resolved. Issues associated with policies represent exceptions to a policy. See Adding an issue to a policy.

  3. Link policy files or associated proof to other objects in Hyperproof, such as controls. See Linking and unlinking proof.

  4. Export one or more effective policy files as needed. See Exporting policies and Downloading a policy document.

  5. Add comments to the Activity Feed for a policy to keep a running log of information about this policy, to ask questions by @mentioning other stakeholders, or to respond to other users' comments. See Communicating via the Activity Feed.

  6. Add tasks related to policy management at any time. See Creating a task.

  7. Archive outdated or unnecessary policies. See Archiving and unarchiving policies.