Administrator Guide

This guide covers everything an Administrator needs to set up, maintain, and get the most out of Dantian Policy Management. As a WordPress Administrator you have full access to every plugin screen: settings, documents, acknowledgement data, approvals, analytics, and tools. You can also read every document regardless of its audience.

This guide can be customised to reflect your organisation’s specific setup and naming conventions.

Your responsibilities at a glance

As an Administrator you:

• Install and configure the plugin for your organisation
• Create and manage document types, categories, and tags
• Decide who can see each document (confidentiality and audience)
• Set up document owners and approvers
• Manage acknowledgement requirements and reminder schedules
• Monitor overall compliance health
• Export audit evidence when required
• Create accounts for external auditors using the Policy Auditor role

Who can do what (built-in access)

The plugin adds one WordPress role and extends two existing ones. There are no separate “Compliance Manager” or “HR Manager” roles.

Document owners are not a WordPress role. You create owner titles (for example “Head of HR”) and assign one person to each title — see step 4 below.

The plugin has no screen for granting its permissions to other roles. If you want, for example, an HR lead to see the Compliance Overview without making them an Administrator, either give them the Policy Auditor role (read-only) or use a role-management plugin.

Initial setup checklist

Complete these steps once after installing the plugin.

Most first-time configuration is done in the Setup Wizard that opens on activation (content types, branding, compliance defaults, default audience, reminders, and starter pages). Until you finish it, the wizard stays available under Policy Management → Setup Wizard. The steps below are where to adjust those choices afterwards. All of them live under Policy Management → Settings.

1. Features tab — turn features on or off

Every feature master switch lives here:

• Enable Acknowledgement System — when off, the acknowledgement screens and tabs are hidden
• Enable Versioning and Changelog Description Visibility (who sees change descriptions in the Version History on document pages)
• Enable Version Approval — require owner approval before version changes are published. You must first set up at least one approver role or one owner title with a user assigned (step 4), otherwise this option cannot be switched on
• Enable Edit Suggestions and Suggestion Roles by Document Type (which roles may suggest edits; if none are set, only administrators can)
• Enable Page Gating, Show View Counts, Exclude Acknowledgement-Required Documents from Popular, and Enable Regulatory Frameworks

2. Content Management tab

• Set the Version Snapshot Limit, the Document Hub Root Page, and the Default Confidentiality Level for new documents
• Choose which document details show on document pages (Frontend Document Meta Display)
• Manage your Document Types

3. Appearance tab

• Set your Primary and Secondary Brand Colours
• Optionally turn on Enable Dark Mode

4. User Management tab — owners, approvers, audiences

• Owner titles (governance roles) — the named positions that own documents (e.g. “Head of HR”, “Quality Manager”)
• WordPress roles allowed to be owners and Assign a user to each owner title — link each title to one real person. That person receives approval requests and review reminders for every document carrying that title
• Approver User Roles — users in these roles can be recorded as a version’s approver, and their own version changes go live without waiting for approval
• User Lists — saved groups of people you can target for acknowledgement in addition to roles
• The messages shown to visitors who must log in, or who are not allowed to see a document (Login Required and Access Restricted titles and messages)

5. Acknowledgements & Notifications tab

(This tab appears once Enable Acknowledgement System is on.)

• Default Acknowledgement Period and Acknowledgement Expiry Schedules (individual documents can override these)
• Re-Acknowledgement Trigger Level — which size of version change (patch, minor, or major) makes staff acknowledge again. The default is major changes only
• Allow Acknowledge on Behalf, Record IP Address with Acknowledgements, Capture Read Time and Reading Reach, and Show Users Their Reading Record
• Comprehension quiz defaults: Questions Per Attempt, Passing Score (%), Failed Attempt Limit, and Cooldown Period (hours)
• Reminder timing: review alerts for owners, reminder cadence by risk tier, individual document reminders, and the Annual Compliance Date with its reminder schedule
• The subject lines of every notification email

6. Version Approval tab

• Document Review Workflow — lets owners record a periodic “reviewed and current” sign-off on each document
• Auto-Approve Owner Changes — when an owner edits their own document, the change goes live without a second approval
• Email Notifications and Approval Link Expiry (Days) (default 30)

7. Search, System Configuration, and PDF Export tabs

• Search — search behaviour, Public REST API Access, and Hide Documents From Guests
• System Configuration — the post type and taxonomy mappings, the sender From Name and From Email, analytics logging and retention (including Exclude Roles from Analytics), and what happens to your data on uninstall
• PDF Export — PDF template, PDF Header Image / Logo, header and footer text, cover page, organisation legal name and regulatory identifier, and whether the version history is printed

8. Create your page structure

The Setup Wizard can create these pages for you. You can also create them yourself by adding the shortcode to a WordPress page:

Optional extra pages you can create yourself:

Add your organisation’s page names and any additional hub pages here.

Managing documents

Creating a document

1. Go to Documents → Add New
2. Write or paste the document content in the editor
3. In the editor sidebar, set the Document Type (e.g. Policy, Procedure), Categories, and Tags
4. In the Acknowledgement sidebar panel, turn on Require acknowledgement if staff must formally confirm they have read it, then choose Who must acknowledge (target roles and/or user lists) and the Expiry (rolling days, an annual date, or a period schedule). If you leave the audience empty, the site default audience applies when you save
5. In the Document Settings box, set:
   • Confidentiality — Public documents can be read without logging in; Internal Use, Confidential, and Restricted documents are limited to logged-in users in the target audience
   • Target Audience (Roles) — which roles can see the document. If no roles are ticked, any logged-in user can see a non-public document
   • Document Owner — the owner title responsible for this document
   • Portal order — reading order within the hub
6. In the Compliance & Status box, set the Effective From date, Risk Rating, Review Cycle (days), Next Review Date, and Document Status
7. If acknowledgement is required, use the Acknowledgement Content & Comprehension box to add introduction text, a custom checkbox statement, campaigns, and an optional comprehension quiz
8. Publish

A document with a future Effective From date stays hidden from staff until that date.

Updating a document

Edit the document, then add a changelog entry in the Version & Changelog box: choose the Change Type (Patch, Minor, or Major) and write a Description of Changes. Saving with a changelog entry creates a new version number. If you save without a changelog entry, the content changes but the version number does not.

• If Enable Version Approval is on and you are not an approver, the change is held for the document owner. The current version stays live until it is approved
• As an Administrator you can tick Approve immediately (administrator override — bypasses owner approval) to publish the change straight away
• A change that meets the Re-Acknowledgement Trigger Level (major changes by default) asks everyone in the audience to acknowledge again, and sends an Updated Document Requires Acknowledgement email to everyone who now needs to

The Version & Changelog box also lists every saved version under Version Snapshots & Rollback. Use View Changes to compare a snapshot with the current content, or Restore to roll back (the current content is backed up first).

Retiring or replacing a document

Change Document Status in the Compliance & Status box:

• Superseded — replaced by a newer document. Choose the replacement under Superseded By
• Archived — retired with no replacement

Superseded and archived documents leave active compliance: they drop out of the hub and search, stop asking for acknowledgements, and are excluded from compliance figures. They stay reachable by direct link with a status banner, and their acknowledgement history is kept.

Monitoring compliance

Compliance Overview

Go to Policy Management → Compliance Overview for a live summary:

• Overall compliance — required acknowledgements that are recorded and currently valid
• Pending approvals — versions awaiting owner approval
• Documents past review cycle
• Expiring soon (30 days) and Already expired acknowledgements, each with a Send reminder button
• Compliance by risk tier, Compliance by role, and Campaign completion

Use Export CSV at the top of the page for a per-document compliance spreadsheet. Figures refresh automatically when an acknowledgement is recorded, and are otherwise cached for up to five minutes.

Acknowledgements screen

Policy Management → Acknowledgements has four tabs:

• Overview — completion for each acknowledgement-required document. Open a document to see who is still pending, then Send Reminder, Schedule… reminders for later, or Acknowledge on Behalf of someone (only when Allow Acknowledge on Behalf is on; a reason is required and recorded)
• Acknowledgement Logs — every acknowledgement record, filterable by document
• Reports — a User, Policy, or Campaign report, plus the Outstanding Users Report. User reports can be exported to CSV
• Attestation Export — an auditor-ready CSV or PDF of acknowledgements, filtered by date range, document, role at acknowledgement, and source. Each row carries the user, role at the time, document version, SHA-256 content hash, and UTC timestamp. The CSV and PDF share an export integrity signature

🔒 Pro feature — requires the Pro plugin.

The Pro add-on adds an Evidence Pack (a ZIP bundle of attestation CSV and PDF, version PDFs, outstanding-staff lists, and an integrity manifest), PDF export of acknowledgement logs and user reports, a bulk PDF download of documents, the Document Compliance dashboard, a Compliance Calendar, a Waiver Register, scheduled weekly or monthly compliance report emails, overdue-acknowledgement escalations, multi-stage approval chains, and outbound webhooks that send acknowledgement events to your HR or learning system.

The approval workflow

When Enable Version Approval is on, a version change saved by someone who is not an approver is held until the document owner approves it. The current version stays live in the meantime.

Flow:

1. An editor saves a change with a changelog entry. It becomes a pending version, and the document editor shows a Pending Version Approval notice
2. The person assigned to the document’s owner title receives a Version Approval Required email with Preview Changes and Approve Version buttons. The approval link works without logging in, asks for one confirmation click, and expires after the number of days set in Approval Link Expiry (Days)
3. The owner can also approve or reject from the Pending Approvals page on the front end, or from the notice on the document’s edit screen
4. On approval, the new content and version number go live
5. On rejection, the pending version is discarded (the live version is unchanged) and its author receives a Version Change Rejected email with the reason, if one was given

Changes saved by an Administrator using the override, by users in an Approver User Roles role, or by the owner themselves (when Auto-Approve Owner Changes is on) skip the queue.

Administrators can see and act on every pending version at Policy Management → Pending Approvals. This menu item appears while version approval is on, or while any pending version is still waiting.

Analytics

Policy Management → Analytics shows, for a chosen period and role:

• Search Overview, Search Trend, Searches by Role, and Top Searches
• Failed Searches and Content Gaps — repeated searches that found nothing, with shortcuts to Create Document or Create FAQ
• Most Viewed Documents and View Trend
• Most Downloaded Documents and Download Trend (PDF downloads)

Analytics are stored in your own WordPress database. You can exclude roles and set retention periods under Settings → System Configuration.

Troubleshooting common issues

For further help, see the Troubleshooting guide.