Guide to the Acknowledgement tool
The tool that allows you to distribute business documents and keep track of their consultation.
Our Acknowledgement tool simplifies internal communication and business document management, helping you distribute the most important documents and track their consultation. Thanks to this component, you can ensure that your colleagues read fundamental documentation. The tool allows you to send a notification directly from a document library, in order to provide colleagues with quick access to documents to be read. Users, in turn, will be able to confirm that they have seen the content by pressing a dedicated button. In addition, you'll be able to monitor these activities in real time thanks to a Power BI report. In summary, our component offers you a simple process for ensuring that users consult the procedures, guidelines and regulations they need to carry out their daily activities
Premises
To set up the Acknowledgement system, the following resources are needed:
An account with a Power BI Pro license, which will be used to create and publish the report;
A SharePoint Online Admin account;
A mail enabled service account, which will be used to send the notifications via email. This user will appear as the sender of such emails.
For SAAS clients: regarding Azure resources, we suggest that you create a group of resources named “IntranetAI” in your Azure AD subscription. If your policies permit, our account should be contributor to this group of resources. This would make us autonomous in the creation of the sql database where data will be saved.
How does the Acknowledgement tool work?
When the tool is installed, editors can see the Acknowledgement command among 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.
In the Select people and groups panel, you can select one or more groups or individual users. In particular, in the first field you need to add groups, while in the second one you need to add users. You can also add distribution lists and groups that are not mail enabled. If you need to write additional comments or you want to customize the message, use the dedicated text box. Then, click on Send to send the notification.
The selected users will receive an email of this kind:
The email features a table which includes information on the document and a link to open it. When the user clicks on the link, he/she will land on the “Acknowledgement” page., i.e., a page where the Acknowledgement web part is configured. See the Create the "Acknowledgement" page section to learn how to configure this web part.
On this page, the user can view the document and confirm that he/she has read it. In particular, the page features two buttons:
By clicking on the Acknowledgement button, the user can confirm that he/she has read the content;
By clicking on the Acknowledgement and download button, the user can download the document besides confirming that he/she has 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 also 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, he/she will access the “Acknowledgement” page. There, he/she will be able to confirm that he/she has 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 through the “Acknowledgement” page.
Create 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.
Add the Acknowledgement web part to the page
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.
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.
Report
Thanks to the integration with Power BI, our component provides you with a detailed overview of the documents shared with this tool. In particular, you’ll be able to access a dynamic report which includes:
The name of the user who was notified;
The department to which the user belongs;
The link to the document;
The title of the document;
The date when the document was sent;
The date when the document was read;
The date when the document was downloaded (if the user clicked on the Acknowledgement and download button).
As explained in the Premises section, a Power BI Pro account is needed for this part.
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