How can i get policies read and acknowledged in SharePoint

Question

We have a policies and procedures document library and I would like to send out some of these documents yearly to group of employees (users in AD). Is there anyway I can do this with SharePoint? Ideally, I want the employee to read and confirm they read the document then audit this fact.

Ideally, if there was a way for the reading request to be sent out automatically as we add new users to groups this would be the ultimate for us.

Answer 1

As with SharePoint there always multiple ways to achieve such a request, i would envision:

1. Enable auditing & notifications (particularly use a filter such as VIEWING Items) - best solution no development, just configuration (a excellent description, and solution for viewing per item here http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb397403(v=office.12).aspx - it could be very easily used on SharePoint 2010). Use alerts to send out notifications to everyone every time you add new version (if that doesn't satify you could always resort to SPD 2010 for no-code notification workflows).
2. Event handlers + same auditing capabilities - requires a little bit of code for the notification part. You could even turn auditing on per list/site/site-collection by code (example here http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb418729(v=office.12).aspx)
3. You could build a Visual studio 2010 workflow which send Tasks to be acknowledged by people, which could also mark that they've read/reviewed the document (more involved, but definitely achievable)
4. 3rd party products (such as the one mentioned by Mark J.)

Hope it helps, C:\Marius

Answer 2

Are you willing to use a 3rd party product ? If so, DocRead (our product) does exactly what you are asking for. It installs on any version of SharePoint (except WSS 3.0 at present). Have a look at http://www.collaboris.com/products/policy-and-procedure-management-software

Just thought I would pop a quick update in to link to our tour. It will take less than 2 minutes and really shows how powerful our solution is : http://www.collaboris.com/products/policy-and-procedure-management-software/tour/audience-targeted-reading

To see a few of our customers please have a look at : http://www.collaboris.com/customers

Thanks Mark

Answer 3

ConvergePoint offers a product as part of its extended Policies and Procedures Portal Suite. You should be able to find more information on our website:

ConvergePolicy™ - Policy and Procedure Management SharePoint 2010 Solution from ConvergePoint

Our Read and Acknowledgement product is ConvergePolicy™ - Policy and Procedure Certification Module