Publishing a company document and choosing its audience

Publishing a company document means placing it in the employees’ library for a specific audience: all employees, or only certain roles or groups, possibly limited to certain sub-companies. This article explains how to publish internal rules, a policy, a guide or an FAQ, how to choose its audience and notify the people concerned, and then how to edit the details of a document that is already published. It is aimed at HR staff and administrators.

Before you start #

• You need the Publish, replace and unpublish company documents permission at the Execute level. The Administrator and HR Manager roles carry it. With the Access level only, the screen opens read-only and the Publish a document button does not appear.
• The screen is located in Settings › Documents › Company documents: your role must also give you access to Settings.
• Prepare your file: PDF, Word (.docx) or text (.txt), up to 20 MB. A PDF that contains text (rather than a scanned image) can be searched word by word by employees.
• If you want to target an employee group, it must already exist: see Creating employee groups.

Publishing a document #

1. Open Settings › Documents › Company documents.
2. Click Publish a document. The Publish a document window opens; it reminds you that “Each employee only sees the documents whose audience includes them.”
3. Enter the Title, as employees will read it in the library (up to 255 characters).
4. Choose the Category: Rules, Policies (selected by default), Guides, FAQ or Other. It determines the section in which the document appears.
5. Choose the document’s Language: French (default), English, German or Italian.
6. If you wish, enter the Effective date: it is shown under the title (“Effective…”). It is optional.
7. Under File (PDF, Word or text, 20 MB max.), choose your document.
8. Choose the audience (see below).
9. If you wish, tick Notify the audience (bell and email).
10. Click Publish. The message “Document published.” confirms publication and the document joins the table with the status Published.

The Publish button stays greyed out while the title, the file or the audience is missing.

Choosing the audience #

The Audience box decides who will read the document. It is set in three steps.

1. All employees, or roles and groups #

• All employees (default): the document is intended for the whole workforce.
• Some roles or groups: two lists appear, Roles and Groups. Choose one or more items in them; you can search within each list. An employee reads the document if they hold one of the roles OR belong to one of the groups. As long as both lists are empty, the message “Choose at least one role or group.” is displayed and publishing is not possible.

The roles offered are those of your workspace (for example Manager for a guide aimed at line managers); the groups are the employee groups defined in Settings. An employee is part of a group if they are named in it or if one of their roles has been added to it.

2. Sub-companies #

The Sub-companies (all if none) field narrows the audience further. Left on All sub-companies, it adds no limit. If you choose one or more sub-companies, only employees who belong to them — through their employee record or a current contract — will read the document. This limit also applies to a document published for All employees: that is how you publish the internal rules of a single company in the group.

3. External workers #

An external worker is a person recorded without an internal contract (a contractor, for example). By default, they do not read company documents, even those published for everyone. Tick Also for external workers to include them, for example for safety instructions.

Notifying the audience #

The Notify the audience (bell and email) box is only offered when publishing. When ticked, it sends, just after publication, a notification in the bell and an email to every active employee in the audience. The notification gives the document’s title, never its content; its link opens the library with the document at the top and highlighted.

• For a large audience, the messages are sent in the background and may take a few minutes.
• If you unpublish the document before the messages go out, nobody is notified.
• Each employee can turn this notification off in their preferences; the email text can be customised in the email settings.

Leave the box unticked for a quiet publication, for example to check a document before announcing it.

Editing a document’s details and audience #

1. In the table, click the pencil icon (Edit) on the document’s row.
2. The Edit the document window opens with the current details: title, category, language, effective date and audience.
3. Make your changes, then click Save. The message “Document updated.” confirms the change.

This window does not change the file: to upload an updated text, use New version (see Replacing, unpublishing or deleting a document). Nor does it send a notification. A change of audience applies immediately: employees removed from the audience no longer see the document, and those added see it the next time they open the library.

Good to know #

• The text of the file is read at publication for searching; a scanned PDF is flagged in the table with “text not read (scan): found by its title only”. To make it searchable, publish a PDF that contains text instead.
• The text of published documents is kept in clear for searching and may be quoted by the assistant: do not include any personal data.
• The Audience column of the table summarises the audience: “All employees”, “1 role(s)”, “1 group(s)”, the number of sub-companies and “external workers included” where relevant.
• The table shows every document, whatever its audience, sorted by category and then by title.

Frequently asked questions #

How do I publish a guide for managers only? #

Choose Some roles or groups, then the Manager role in the Roles list. Only employees who hold that role will see the guide.

I want to publish the same internal rules for two companies in the group, with two different texts. #

Publish two documents, each with its own file and, under Sub-companies, the company concerned. Each employee will only see the one for their company.

I forgot to tick “Notify the audience”. Can I send the notification afterwards? #

No, the notification is only offered at publication. You can delete the document and publish it again with the box ticked, or announce it another way, for example with an announcement on the dashboard: see Publishing an announcement on the dashboard.