It is important to be aware that the Policy Assistant is controlled using two Permission levels, rather than the standard four used throughout most of Activ’s other modules. These Permissions are:
- None – the user cannot access the PA; and
- Admin – the user has full access to the PA.
Activ’s intermediary Permission levels (Read Only, Edit, Export) are not provided for this module because:
- normal usage of the PA requires users to discard previous Policies before beginning a new Policy, and discarded Policies cannot be retrieved. As such, users must be authorised to discard work that has already been completed (by them), so that they can begin new work.
- completed Policies must be exported from your system before you can finalise their details and upload them into the File Manager or your own documentation system. As such, users must be able to export their work as part of the module’s standard workflow.
- each user of the PA is provided with their own view of the module, and can only see their own In-Progress Policy. And;
- the PA is a tool that has been designed to help you write your Policies, and is not a repository for those Policies. In addition, all Policies should be reviewed by a member of your Top Management before they are put into formal use. As such, it is not appropriate for lower-level users to be provided with ‘for reference’ access as they might be for Activ’s other modules.
This effectively means that there can only be two user states for the PA: ‘can access it and use all functionality within it’, or ‘cannot access it at all’.
In addition to the above, it is also important to be aware that the PA can only hold one Policy per user at any one time, and that all users who have access to the module will be presented with their own view of the module. In other words:
- it is not possible for User A and user B to simultaneously work on the same Policy, or to view each other’s Policies from within the PA;
- if User A begins a Policy, and then User B accesses the PA, User B will be presented with the PA’s Introductory Screen (if they do not have an in-progress Policy of their own) or their own Policy (if they had previously generated one and have not yet discarded it).
- if User B begins a new Policy, their work will not have any impact on User A’s work. Both Policies will exist simultaneously, but will only be accessible to the user who created it.
As a result of this, it is strongly advised that access to the PA is limited to one or two individuals to limit the risks of work being duplicated in error.
