Creating and Managing Documents
This guide covers everything you need to know about creating, editing, categorising, and managing documents in the plugin.
Creating a new document
Go to Documents → Add New in the WordPress admin.
Writing the content
Use the WordPress block editor to write your document content. You can use:
- Headings (H2, H3, H4)
- Paragraphs, bullet lists, numbered lists
- Tables
- Images and file attachments
- Any standard WordPress block
The document content is what staff read, and it is what the SHA-256 fingerprint is generated from. Write it as you would any important organisational document.
Setting the document type
In the right-hand sidebar, find the Document Type panel. Select the type that best describes this document: Policy, Procedure, Guide, Form, or any type you have added. You manage document types under Policy Management → Settings → Content Management (see Document types below).
Document types control which tab a document appears on in the Document Hub. A document with no type still appears in the hub, on a separate No document type tab.
The editor panel has no “add new” option — new types can only be created in Settings, so your list of types stays tidy. (The panel’s help line refers to “Settings → Document Types”; the types are actually managed in the Manage Document Types panel on the Content Management tab.)
Setting the category
Categories let you group documents within a document type. For example, under “Policies” you might have categories for HR, Health & Safety, Finance, and IT. Categories appear as groups within each tab of the Document Hub.
To assign a category, use the Document Categories panel in the sidebar. You can create new categories there or manage them at Documents → Categories.
Categories are optional. A typed document with no category still appears in its type’s hub tab, in a No category box. (A warning on the edit screen says an uncategorised document “won’t appear in the Document Hub browse tabs” — that warning is out of date; the document is still listed under No category. Assigning a category does make it easier to find.)
Governance metadata
The Document Settings and Compliance & Status panels in the sidebar contain the fields specific to this plugin. These are essential for the governance and compliance features.
Document Owner
The owner title responsible for this document (for example, “Compliance Lead”), chosen from a drop-down in the Document Settings panel. The drop-down lists the owner titles you set up under Settings → User Management; each title is assigned to a person there. If no titles exist yet, the panel shows a link to add them.
When version approval is turned on, the owner is emailed a secure approval link each time someone records a new version, and approves or rejects it before it goes live to staff.
Confidentiality
Classify the document as Public, Internal Use, Confidential, or Restricted (or leave it Unclassified):
- Public — open to everyone, including logged-out visitors.
- Internal Use and above — require a login and are limited to the target audience.
- Unclassified documents are flagged on the compliance dashboard so you can classify them.
Exported PDFs of Confidential and Restricted documents carry a note recording who downloaded them and when.
A new document starts at the site-wide Default Confidentiality Level (Settings → Content Management), which is Restricted unless you change it. So a freshly published document is visible only to logged-in users in its audience until you change its classification — choose Public deliberately for anything visitors should read without logging in.
With the Pro add-on, Confidential and Restricted documents are never sent to an AI provider.
Audience
Which WordPress user roles can see this document — Target Audience (Roles) in the Document Settings panel. Only logged-in users with one of the listed roles can find, open, or search for a non-public document. If you leave it empty, any logged-in user can see it.
When the document requires acknowledgement, the roles you ask to acknowledge it are added to this audience automatically.
Tip: If a document should be visible to all logged-in staff, leave the audience empty or select every staff role. If it is for management only, select only those roles.
Portal order
Controls the reading order of this document within a documentation portal (
Type to search documents. Results will appear below. ). Use steps of 10 (0, 10, 20…) to leave room for new documents. (The field’s help text calls the portal the “Document Hub portal” — it means the documentation portal, not the Document Hub, whose lists are not affected.)
Effective From
The date this document takes effect, in the Compliance & Status panel. It also controls visibility: a published document with a future Effective From date is hidden from non-editors until that date arrives (anyone following a direct link sees a Not Yet Effective notice with the date it becomes available). The editor shows a warning whenever you set a future date.
If you are updating an already-published document and want the current version to stay live until the new wording takes effect, don’t just set a future date — use Schedule this update in the same panel. See Scheduling an update for the full walkthrough.
Risk Rating
How much it matters if this document is ignored: Low, Medium, High, or Critical (or leave it Unrated). The rating does real work:
- It pre-fills the Review Cycle below with the tier’s suggested interval (you can always override it).
- It sets how persistently staff are reminded about acknowledgements — higher tiers get more pre-due reminders and keep being re-reminded after falling overdue (see Review & reminder cadence by risk tier in Settings → Acknowledgements & Notifications).
- The Compliance Overview breaks completion down by risk tier, so a gap on a Critical policy is never hidden inside a good overall number.
- You can filter the document list by risk rating in the admin.
Review Cycle
How often this document should be reviewed — Review Cycle (days), e.g. 365 for annual review. It lives in the Compliance & Status panel directly under Risk Rating, together with the Next Review Date. Picking a risk rating suggests a cycle (Critical 182 days … Low 730 days); a value you type yourself is never overwritten. The acknowledgement expiry period controls when staff must re-acknowledge; the review dates drive review reminders to the document’s assigned owner before the content is due for a check.
Document Status
Records where the document sits in its lifecycle. This is separate from the WordPress publish status:
- Active (in force) — live and in regular use. This is the default.
- Superseded (replaced by a newer document) — retired because another document replaces it. Choose the replacement in the Superseded By field (the editor reminds you if you forget); readers who land on the old document see a banner linking to its replacement.
- Archived (retired, no replacement) — retired outright.
Superseded and Archived documents leave active compliance: they disappear from the default hub listing and search, stop generating acknowledgement requirements, no longer gate pages, and drop out of the compliance numbers. They are not deleted — direct links still work (with a status banner), and administrators still see them in the admin document list (use the All Statuses filter to find them). Setting the status back to Active restores everything.
Acknowledgement settings
In the Acknowledgement panel in the editor sidebar:
- Require acknowledgement — Turn this on to show the acknowledgement panel to staff on this document. Without it, the document is informational only. Turning it on reveals the rest of the panel.
- Who must acknowledge — Tick the Target roles and Target user lists who must acknowledge. If you leave both empty, the site default audience applies when you save.
- Timing — Choose how the acknowledgement expires: Rolling days (set a Renewal period (days)), Annual date (a fixed MM-DD date each year), or Period schedule (one of your named expiry schedules).
- Content & quiz — A summary of the acknowledgement wording and comprehension quiz, with an Edit content & quiz button.
The wording and quiz themselves are edited in the Acknowledgement Content & Comprehension box below the editor, which appears while acknowledgement is required:
- Introduction/Explanatory Text — shown above the acknowledgement form.
- Checkbox Statement Text — the statement staff tick. Leave it blank to use “I have read and understood this document”.
- Acknowledgement Campaigns — tick the campaigns this document belongs to (see Acknowledgement Campaigns). Campaigns are available whenever the acknowledgement system is on.
- Comprehension quiz — optionally require a passing quiz before acknowledgement, with your own questions (single choice, true/false, or multiple correct).
Publishing and the approval workflow
Clicking Publish makes a new document live to its configured audience straight away — version approval does not hold a document’s first version.
If version approval is enabled (Settings → Features → Enable Version Approval), later versions are held for approval. When you add a changelog entry in Version & Changelog and save, the version that is already live stays live, and the document owner is emailed a secure approval link. The new version goes live only once the owner (or an approver) approves it — from the email link, from Policy Management → Pending Approvals, from a front-end page using Please log in to view pending approvals. Log in
Changes go live immediately, without being held, when they are made by the document owner (while Auto-Approve Owner Changes is on, the default), by a user in an approver role, or by an administrator who ticks Approve immediately (administrator override — bypasses owner approval).
Document types
Document types appear as tabs in the Document Hub. The plugin ships with four built-in types: Policy, Procedure, Guide, and Form.
Manage them under Policy Management → Settings → Content Management, in the Manage Document Types panel (administrators). The table shows each type’s Name, Slug, number of Documents, a Hub Tab column, and a Document Hub column. Built-in types carry a Built-in badge.
About the labels. In this panel, “Document Hub” in the Document Hub column and in Show in Document Hub () means the
documentation portal, not theDocument Hub page. And the Hub Tab options do not control the Document Hub’s tabs — see the note below.Type to search documents. Results will appear below.
Adding a document type
In Add New Document Type, enter a Name and click Add Document Type. The slug is generated automatically; a name whose slug already exists is refused (“A document type with that slug already exists.”). Two options are available:
- Also create a hub tab for this type (ticked by default) — creates a top-level category with the same name as the type.
- Show in Document Hub () — include documents of this type in documentation portals built with
. Out of the box, only the Guide type is included.
How Document Hub tabs actually work. The
page shows a tab for every document type that has documents the visitor can see — whether or not a “hub tab” category exists. Also create a hub tab for this type and the Show as Document Hub tab option when editing only create, show or hide the matching category; unticking Show as Document Hub tab does not currently remove the type’s tab from the hub. To change the order of tabs, use theType to search documents. Results will appear below.
shortcode’sType to search documents. Results will appear below.
doc_typesattribute.
Editing and deleting types
Each type in the list has Edit and Delete links. Editing lets you rename the type and change its two display options (Show as Document Hub tab and Show in Document Hub ()). Renaming changes the label only; the slug stays the same.
Deleting opens a Confirm Deletion box that tells you how many documents use the type (“They will have no type after deletion”). If a matching hub category exists, you can also tick Also delete the matching hub tab category — this removes that category and its child categories (the documents themselves stay). Click Confirm Delete to go ahead. Documents are never deleted; documents left without a type move to the hub’s No document type tab. Built-in types can be deleted too, and they are not recreated automatically.
Ordering types
Hub tabs follow the order given in the
Type to search documents. Results will appear below. shortcode’s doc_types attribute — Policies, Procedures, Guides, Forms by default. Any other types follow alphabetically. See Document Hub & Shortcodes.
Document categories
Categories group documents within each document type. In the Document Hub, each category gets its own box inside each tab; a document in two categories appears in both, and documents with no category appear under No category.
Go to Documents → Categories to manage them. Categories can be nested (parent and child), and each category has a Portal order field that controls its position in documentation portal sidebars: lower numbers appear first, and 0 (the default) sorts the category alphabetically. You can set it when adding or editing a category, or change it straight from the Portal order column in the categories list — the new number saves as soon as you change it, without reloading the page. Portal order affects portals only; it does not reorder the Document Hub.
Example hierarchy:
- HR (parent)
- Recruitment
- Performance Management
- Leave Policies
- Health & Safety (parent)
- Incident Reporting
- Hazard Management
Tags
You can apply tags to documents (the Document Tags panel in the sidebar, or Documents → Tags) for additional grouping and scoping. Tags drive two shortcode features:
- A documentation portal —
Document not found.
- Tag-scoped search —
Type to search. Results will appear below.
Type to search documents. Results will appear below.
Example use case: Tag all staff-handbook documents with “onboarding”, then create an onboarding page using Document not found.
Tags are flat (no parents), and you can add new tags straight from the editor sidebar. Tag slugs are what the shortcodes use, so keep them short and stable — renaming a tag’s slug breaks any shortcode that refers to the old one.
Regulatory frameworks
You can also label documents with the regulatory frameworks they help you meet — for example RTO Standards or Australian Privacy Principles. This is a Free feature, off by default.
- Go to Policy Management → Settings → Features and tick Enable Regulatory Frameworks, then save.
- A Regulatory Frameworks panel appears on every document’s edit screen, and a Regulatory Frameworks column in the documents list.
- Build your hierarchy (framework → section → standard) and tick the frameworks each document supports.
Which roles can see a document’s frameworks on the front end is set in the Frontend Document Meta Display grid (Settings → Content Management). See Regulatory Framework Mapping for the full guide, including CSV import and export.
🔒 Pro feature — requires the Pro plugin. Pro adds a curated Framework Library of ready-made frameworks, the Coverage & Gaps readiness view, a Framework Editor for custom frameworks, and optional AI tools.
Editing an existing document
Open any document from Documents → All Documents. Make your changes in the editor and in the sidebar fields.
To record the change as a new version, open the Version & Changelog box below the editor (the sidebar’s Add changelog entry button takes you there) and fill in Add Changelog Entry:
- Change Type — Patch (typos, minor fixes), Minor (content updates), or Major (significant changes, invalidates acknowledgements).
- Description of Changes — what changed in this version. The version number only increments when you enter a description.
- Approved By — optionally record who approved the change.
Then save the document. Whether staff must re-acknowledge depends on the site’s Re-Acknowledgement Trigger Level (major changes only, by default). The change description appears in the document’s version history; who can see it on the front end is controlled by Changelog Description Visibility under Settings → Features.
The same box lists the Version History and Version Snapshots & Rollback, where you can view changes between versions (side by side or inline) and restore an earlier version. The current content is backed up before a restore.
The documents list
Go to Documents → All Documents to see all your documents in a table.
Alongside the standard columns, the list shows Last Modified, Risk, Status (Active, Superseded, or Archived), Ack. Roles (who must acknowledge), and Target Audience. Above the table you can filter by acknowledgement role, audience, risk rating, document status, document type, category, and tag. Click any document title to open it for editing.
Archiving a document
When a document is no longer current but you want to keep its history, set its Document Status to Archived (or Superseded, if another document replaces it). This keeps all acknowledgement records intact and keeps the document in the admin list, but removes it from the Document Hub, search, acknowledgement requirements, and compliance figures.
Archive rather than delete any document that has acknowledgement records.
Deleting a document
Deleting a document permanently removes it from your site, so you can no longer open the version your staff acknowledged. If you might need it for auditing, archive it rather than delete it.
Importing existing documents
If you are migrating from another system (shared drive, document management tool, another policy system), use Policy Management → Tools → File Import:
- Upload a ZIP file of Word (.docx), PDF, plain-text (.txt), or Markdown (.md) files.
- Review the preview of what will be imported.
- Confirm the import. The plugin creates a draft document from each file.
Each imported draft is marked “Imported draft — review required.” Open it, check the extracted text, set the audience, acknowledgement, and review fields, click Mark reviewed, and publish when ready.
The Pro add-on adds a Bulk Import tool for creating documents, with their categories and metadata, from a CSV file.
Who can do what
- Administrators can create, edit, publish, archive and delete any document, and manage document types (Settings → Content Management).
- Other users can work with documents according to the editing permissions their WordPress role grants. Creating categories and tags, and changing a category’s Portal order, needs permission to manage categories (Administrators and Editors, by default).
- What a reader can see is decided by each document’s Confidentiality and Target Audience (Roles) — see Core Concepts. Administrators always see everything.
Worked example: an RTO sets up its policy library
A registered training organisation (RTO) is moving its policies off a shared drive before an audit.
- Types and categories. It keeps the four built-in types. Under Documents → Categories it creates Student Services, Assessment, Work Health & Safety and Governance.
- Import. It zips its Word files and runs Policy Management → Tools → File Import. Each file becomes a draft marked “Imported draft — review required.”
- Classify each draft. For the Complaints and Appeals Policy: Document Type Policy, Document Categories Student Services, tag
student-handbook, Confidentiality Public (students must be able to read it without logging in), audience left empty, Risk Rating High (which suggests a review cycle). For the Assessment Moderation Procedure: Procedure, Assessment, Internal Use, audience Trainer, and Require acknowledgement on. - Frameworks. It turns on Enable Regulatory Frameworks and labels each policy with the RTO Standards it addresses.
- Publish. Each document is checked, marked reviewed and published. The Document Hub now shows Policy and Procedure tabs, grouped by category; students see only the Public documents, trainers see their procedures too.
- A student handbook. A page with
Document not found.
- A year later, the Complaints policy is replaced by a new one. The RTO publishes the new document, then sets the old one’s Document Status to Superseded with Superseded By pointing at the replacement. Old acknowledgements stay on record, and anyone who opens the old policy from a saved link sees a banner pointing to the new one.
Troubleshooting
A published document doesn’t appear in the Document Hub. Check, in order: the reader is logged in (only Public documents show to visitors, and new documents default to Restricted); their role is in Target Audience (Roles), or the audience is empty; Effective From is not in the future; Document Status is Active (Superseded and Archived documents are left out). Documents without a type are on the No document type tab, and documents without a category sit in the No category box of their type’s tab.
I unticked “Show as Document Hub tab” but the tab is still there. That option controls the matching category, not the hub tab — see How Document Hub tabs actually work. A type’s tab appears whenever it has documents the visitor can see.
My documents don’t appear in a portal. The document needs the portal’s tag and a type switched on for portals (Show in Document Hub () — only Guide by default).
I can’t add a new document type from the editor. That’s by design — add it under Settings → Content Management → Manage Document Types.
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