Editor / Policy Author Guide
This guide is for Editors and Policy Authors — the people who write, update, and maintain the documents. It assumes your account has the WordPress Editor role, which the plugin extends so you can set a document’s governance details (owner, audience, acknowledgement, review dates) and moderate edit suggestions. You do not manage the plugin’s settings, user roles, or compliance reports; your focus is the document library.
This guide can be customised to describe your organisation’s content authorship workflow, the document templates you use, and any house-style or tone-of-voice guidelines.
Your responsibilities
As an Editor / Policy Author you:
- Write and update policy and procedure documents
- Fill in each document’s governance details (owner, audience, confidentiality, review dates, acknowledgement settings)
- Record a changelog entry for each new version
- Revise and resubmit changes that a document owner rejects
- Write and maintain FAQs
- Review edit suggestions from staff, when your organisation uses them
What you see in wp-admin
- Documents — All Documents, Add New, Categories, and Tags. (Administrators create acknowledgement campaigns; you can add a document to an existing campaign from its edit screen.)
- FAQs — All FAQs, Add New, and Categories
- Policy Management → Edit Suggestions — only when your organisation has turned on edit suggestions
Compliance reports, acknowledgement data, analytics, approvals, and settings are for Administrators (and, read-only, Policy Auditors).
The document lifecycle
A document has a WordPress publishing status and, separately, a governance status.
| State | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Draft (WordPress status) | Being written. Not visible to staff. |
| Published (WordPress status) | Live for its audience, from its Effective From date |
| Pending version | A change to a published document that is waiting for the document owner’s approval. The previous version stays live until it is approved |
| Active (Document Status) | In force — appears in the hub, search, and compliance reporting |
| Superseded / Archived (Document Status) | Replaced or retired. Removed from the hub, search, acknowledgement requirements, and compliance figures, but still reachable by direct link, with history kept |
Creating a new document
- Go to Documents → Add New
- Write the document content in the editor
- Fill in the editor sidebar and the boxes below the content:
| Where | Field | What to enter |
|---|---|---|
| Sidebar | Document Type | Policy, Procedure, Guide, Form, or the custom types your administrator set up |
| Sidebar | Categories and Tags | The organisational category (e.g. HR, Clinical) and any tags your organisation uses |
| Sidebar → Acknowledgement | Require acknowledgement | Turn on if staff must formally confirm they have read it |
| Sidebar → Acknowledgement | Who must acknowledge | Target roles and/or Target user lists. If left empty, the site default audience applies when you save |
| Sidebar → Acknowledgement | Expiry | Rolling days (with a Renewal period), an Annual date, or a Period schedule |
| Document Settings box | Confidentiality | Public (anyone, no login), or Internal Use, Confidential, Restricted (logged-in audience only) |
| Document Settings box | Target Audience (Roles) | Which roles can see the document |
| Document Settings box | Document Owner | The owner title responsible for this document — this person approves changes |
| Document Settings box | Portal order | Reading order in the hub (use steps of 10) |
| Compliance & Status box | Effective From | When it takes effect. A future date hides the document from staff until then |
| Compliance & Status box | Risk Rating, Review Cycle (days), Next Review Date | Used for review reminders and risk-tier reporting |
| Compliance & Status box | Document Status | Active for a live document |
- If acknowledgement is required, use the Acknowledgement Content & Comprehension box to add Introduction/Explanatory Text, a custom Checkbox Statement Text, Acknowledgement Campaigns, and an optional comprehension quiz (tick Require a passing comprehension quiz before acknowledgement and add questions with + Add Question)
- Click Publish
A new document starts at version 1.0.0. Version approval only applies to changes made after the first publish.
Updating an existing document
- Open the document from Documents → All Documents
- Edit the content
- In the Version & Changelog box, under Add Changelog Entry:
- Choose the Change Type: Patch (typos, minor fixes), Minor (content updates), or Major (significant changes)
- Write a Description of Changes — this appears in the version history and in the approval email to the owner
- Optionally choose who Approved By (only people in your organisation’s approver roles are listed)
- Click Update
The changelog entry is what creates a new version. If you save without one, the content changes but the version number does not, and nobody is asked to approve or re-acknowledge.
Choosing the right change type
The change type decides whether staff must acknowledge the document again. By default only Major changes trigger re-acknowledgement; your administrator may have set a different level.
- Patch — typo fixes, formatting, broken links
- Minor — clarifications and added detail that do not change what staff must do
- Major — any change to what staff are required to do. Everyone in the acknowledgement audience is asked to acknowledge again
Scheduling an update
To prepare a change now but have it go live later, set a future Effective From date on an already-published document and tick Schedule this update — keep the current version live until the date above, then publish these changes automatically. The current version stays live until that date.
The approval workflow
When your organisation has version approval switched on:
- You save a change with a changelog entry. Instead of going live, it becomes a pending version and a Pending Version Approval notice appears on the edit screen. The current version stays live
- The person assigned to the document’s owner title receives a Version Approval Required email with your description of the changes and buttons to preview and approve
- If approved: your changes go live with the new version number
- If rejected: the pending version is discarded and you receive a Version Change Rejected email with the owner’s reason. Make the corrections and save again with a new changelog entry
Your change skips the queue and goes live straight away if you are the document’s owner (and your organisation auto-approves owners’ own changes), or if your role is one of the organisation’s approver roles.
Tips for smooth approvals:
- Always write a clear Description of Changes so the owner understands what changed
- If the changes are significant, let the owner know before you submit
- Let the owner deal with one pending version at a time
Describe your organisation’s version control and approval conventions here, including any required pre-approval steps (e.g. legal review, SME sign-off).
Managing FAQs
FAQs are a lightweight way to answer common questions without a full policy document.
Creating a FAQ
- Go to FAQs → Add New
- Write the question as the title
- Write the answer in the editor
- Assign a FAQ Category (e.g. Technical, HR, Safety)
- In the Source Document box, choose the Related Document the answer comes from
- Publish
Link every FAQ to a source document. A FAQ takes its visibility (public or not, and which roles can see it) from its source document. A FAQ with no source document stays private — only logged-in editors can see it.
FAQs do not have acknowledgements or versions.
Reviewing FAQ feedback
Staff can answer Was this helpful? with Yes or No and leave a comment. You can see the results in the Feedback column of FAQs → All FAQs, and the written comments in the User Feedback box when you edit a FAQ. Use them to find FAQs that need better answers.
🔒 Pro feature — requires the Pro plugin.
The Pro add-on includes AI-assisted FAQ generation. Draft FAQs generated from a document’s content appear under FAQs → AI Generated for you to review, edit, and publish.
Managing edit suggestions
When your organisation has turned on edit suggestions, staff in the permitted roles see a Suggest an Edit button on document pages. Their suggestions appear in Policy Management → Edit Suggestions, with tabs for Pending, Approved, Rejected, and All.
- Click Review next to a pending suggestion. You see the Current Content and Suggested Content side by side, plus any note from the submitter
- Choose what to do:
- Apply As-Is & Approve — replaces the whole document content with the suggestion and records a new version. Tick the confirmation box first. Use this only when the suggestion is a complete replacement. If version approval is on and the document has an owner, the owner approves it first
- Edit in Block Editor First… — opens the document with the suggestion on screen for reference, so you can work the change in by hand. You can pre-fill a changelog entry and version bump
- Approve Only (No Content Change) — accept the suggestion without changing the document
- Reject — decline, with a Reason for rejection
- The submitter receives an email telling them whether their suggestion was approved or not accepted
You can only act on suggestions for documents you are allowed to edit.
Document versioning reference
What counts as a new version?
A new version number is created each time you save with a changelog entry. Separately, the plugin saves a snapshot of the previous content whenever a published document’s content changes, so the content history is kept even for edits saved without a changelog entry. (Your administrator sets how many snapshots are kept per document.)
Version numbering
Versions are numbered automatically from 1.0.0: a patch adds 0.0.1 (1.0.0 → 1.0.1), a minor change adds 0.1.0 (→ 1.1.0), and a major change adds 1.0.0 (→ 2.0.0). You choose the change type; you do not type the number.
Accessing previous versions
In the Version & Changelog box, Version History lists every version with its date, type, description, author, and approver. Under Version Snapshots & Rollback, click View Changes to compare a saved version with the current content (Side by Side or Inline), or Restore to roll the content back. The current content is backed up before a restore.
Staff see the version list (and, depending on settings, the change descriptions) under Version History on the document page.
Frequently asked questions
Q: I accidentally published a document with errors. Can I unpublish it? Yes. Switch the document back to Draft in the editor. It disappears from staff view immediately. Fix the errors and publish again.
Q: How do I retire a document that is no longer relevant? In the Compliance & Status box, set Document Status to Archived (or Superseded, and choose the replacement under Superseded By). The document leaves the hub, search, and acknowledgement requirements, but its acknowledgement records and version history are kept.
Q: Can two editors work on the same document at the same time? WordPress warns you if someone else is editing a document, but it does not merge changes. The last person to save overwrites the other’s changes. Coordinate with your team before editing a shared document.
Q: The approval email went to the wrong person. How do I change the document owner? Check the Document Owner title on the document. If the title is right but the wrong person holds it, ask your administrator to reassign the title under Settings → User Management. If no titles are listed, your administrator has not set any up yet.
Q: I need to include a table or image in the policy. Is that supported? Yes. The block editor supports tables, images, and all standard WordPress blocks. Images are stored in the WordPress media library.