Acknowledgement for documents
This page explains how to request confirmation of document consultation.
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This page explains how to request confirmation of document consultation.
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With the Acknowledgement component, you can request confirmation of document consultation, ensuring that selected users acknowledge important documents. In this section, you will learn how to send notifications from a document library, integrate the Acknowledgement tool with the document sections of the intranet, and track users' acknowledgements through the reporting system.
When the tool is installed, the Acknowledgement command is added to the actions available in a document library. With this action, you can email employees to inform them that one or more documents should be read. The Acknowledgement button appears when one or more documents are selected. So, the first steps you need to take are as follows:
Click on the gear icon at the top right of the page, and then on Site contents.
Select a document library.
Select one or more files and click on Acknowledgement.
The following panel appears:
Here, you can select one or more groups or individual users. More specifically, you can select:
Individual users;
Microsoft 365 groups;
Distribution lists (even with guest users).
If you need to write additional comments or you want to customize the message, use the Additional email message box. Then, you have two options:
If you click the Send email button, you will send an email to the selected users, inviting them to open the document and confirm acknowledgement.
If you click the Generate links button, you will generate a link to open the document through the “Acknowledgement” page (see below).
If you click on Send email, a confirmation message appears informing you that the acknowledgement request has been sent successfully.
The selected users will receive an email of this kind:
The email features the title of the document and a button to open it. Clicking on Open and confirm takes the user to the “Acknowledgement” page., i.e., a page where the Acknowledgement web part is configured. To learn how to configure the “Acknowledgement” web part, please refer to the Create the "Acknowledgement" page section.
Clicking Generate links creates a link to open the document via the “Acknowledgement” page. This allows you to share the document through other channels (e.g., Teams) or include the link in a news post or intranet page. Simply click Copy to copy the link and use it as needed.
You can view the users and/or groups already selected for a file by selecting the file and clicking the Acknowledgement button.
If needed, you can modify your selection by adding or removing users/groups.
If you add new users or groups, those already selected will not receive a new notification. If you remove a user or group, the report will update accordingly, removing the related data.
Clicking the Open and Confirm button in the email or the link generated via the Generate links option directs the user to the "Acknowledgement" page. On this page, the user can view the document and confirm that they have read it. In particular, the page features two buttons:
By clicking the Acknowledgement button, the user can confirm that they have read the content;
By clicking the Acknowledgement and download button, the user can download the document besides confirming that they have read it.
These buttons can be activated or deactivated when configuring the Acknowledgement web part. See the Create the "Acknowledgement" page section to learn more.
When the user clicks on the Acknowledgement button, the following pop-up appears:
And the “Acknowledgement” page is updated as follows:
You can configure the Company Documents and Company Documents with Folders web parts in order to integrate them with the Acknowledgement system. This way, when the user clicks on a file, they will access the “Acknowledgement” page. There, they will be able to confirm that they have viewed the content. This configuration is carried out in the web part property pane, specifically in the Document settings section. This section includes the following field:
Here, you need to enter the URL of the “Acknowledgement” page. This way, all the documents displayed in the web part will be opened via the “Acknowledgement” page.
To build the “Acknowledgement” page, first of all you need to create a new page. To do so, take the following steps:
Click on the gear icon at the top right of the page, and then on Site contents.
Scroll down until you see the Site Pages folder and click on it.
Click on the SystemPages folder.
Click on New > Site Page to create an empty page.
Add a title to the page, which can simply be “Acknowledgement”, and choose your preferred layout for the title area.
If your page is not already in edit mode, click on Edit at the top right of the page.
Click on it and, in the web part search box, enter Acknowledgement to quickly find and select the Acknowledgement web part.
Click the Edit properties button on the left of the web part to open the property pane. See below for detailed information about the configuration.
The configuration pane of the Acknowledgement web part allows you to customize texts and to activate or deactivate buttons and sections.
The first field allows you to customize the text of the Acknowledgement button. If you leave this field blank, the default text will be used, which is “Acknowledgement”.
With the Hide Acknowledgement button option, you can deactivate the Acknowledgement button.
The third field allows you to customize the text of the Acknowledgement and download button. If you leave this field blank, the default text will be used, which is “Acknowledgement and download”.
With the Hide Acknowledgement and download button option, you can deactivate the Acknowledgement and download button.
Next, you can decide to hide or show the pdf toolbar. If you choose Yes, the following bar will not be displayed:
You can then customize the introductory text. If you leave this field blank, the default text will be used, which is “By clicking on the following action buttons I confirm that I have read this content”.
The last option allows you to choose the position of the button section, which can be either at the top or at the bottom of the page.
When you have completed the configuration of the web part, click on Publish.
The “Acknowledgement” page should be created on the main site of your intranet, even if company documents are stored in a subsite.
The “Acknowledgement” page can be cross-site.
To manage file versions, an additional button, Notify new version, is available. When a new version of a file is uploaded, it can be notified to the same users who received the previous version. Simply select the document and click Notify new version to send an email notification.
When you click the Notify new version button, the following message appears:
You don't need to select users again: the same users who received the previous version of the file will automatically be notified of the new version. Therefore, you just need to click on Send email. When you do so, the following confirmation message appears:
The email explicitly states that it refers to a new version of the file.
Similarly to what happens when the first email is sent, clicking Open and confirm directs the user to the "Acknowledgement" page, where they can confirm the acknowledgement of the new file version.
The Notify new version button is always visible, even when a new document is selected.
Thanks to the integration with Power BI, Acknowledgement provides you with a dynamic report which offers a detailed overview of the documents shared with this tool. The report consists of two pages:
The first page contains a comprehensive list of all documents for which an acknowledgement request has been sent. For each file, the following details are available:
Document title
Link to the document
Total number of users requested to acknowledge the document
Total number of users who have confirmed acknowledgement
Percentage of users who have confirmed acknowledgement
Acknowledgement status
URL of the document library where the file is stored
URL of the site where the file is stored
The second page provides an in-depth view of a specific document. This page is accessible through the Drill through function: right-click on a document title in the summary page and select Drill through to access additional details. This section includes:
Detailed user information
Name of the user requested to acknowledge the document
Country and office location
Job title
Department
Link to the document
Email sent date
Acknowledgement date
Download date (if the user confirmed both acknowledgement and download)
Latest acknowledged version (the version of the document the user has confirmed reading)
A graph tracking acknowledgement over time
A summary section displaying the acknowledgement status
A filter section to refine the displayed data
Hover your mouse below the title area. You will see a line with a circled +, like this: .
