Smart Policies (Policy Manager)

Features

The Policy Manager list

Where to find it: Smart Policy Manager

Lists every policy group with its Shortcode. New groups are saved as Private. The shortcode still displays a private group to every visitor — see the troubleshooting section if you show its title.

Managing the documents in a group

Open a group from the Smart Policy Manager list. Each document row has the display name box, then two buttons beside it:

• Advanced - opens the panel with the File, Note and Reminder sections (see below).
• Remove - takes the document out of this group after you confirm. The file stays in the Media Library.

To swap in a new version of a file, open Advanced and, in the File section, select Replace file, then pick the new version from the Media Library. The row keeps its display name, so a page showing the group simply links to the new file.

The last column shows a review status icon: No review scheduled, Review up to date, Review due soon (within 30 days of the next date) or Review overdue. Hover over it for the words.

Order by (Display name, File name, Reminder date or Date added) and Direction only change the order of the table on this screen. The order on your website is set in the shortcode.

Delete all files at the bottom of the box removes every document from the group after you confirm. As with Remove, the files stay in the Media Library.

When you add or replace a file, its title in the Media Library gains the prefix "Policies - ", so you can find policy documents quickly by searching the Media Library for "Policies".

Layout and appearance

Where to find it: the Layout drop-down beside the shortcode, and the Appearance box on a group's edit screen

Both save as soon as you change them - there is no need to select Update.

In Appearance, pick a colour for Border, Background and Text (the Compact table layout has Odd rows and Even rows instead of a background). Clear a colour to go back to the theme default. Hide Header removes the group title and the search box from the page. With the Magazine layout, Hide document titles also removes the title under each book.

To use a different layout on one page only, add layout to the shortcode, for example [smart_policies id="689" layout="grid"]. The Magazine reader works best with PDFs; other file types open in a new tab. A group shared from another website brings its layout and colours with it.

Review reminders

Open Advanced on a document row, then use the Reminder section.

Select Save in the panel footer to keep your changes, or Close to hide the panel.

• A reminder is only sent when a Month and Day are chosen, the Frequency is not None, and there is at least one valid email address.
• The check runs once a day and sends at most one reminder per period. Every 6 months and Quarterly count on from the month you pick; Monthly sends on the chosen day every month.
• If the day does not exist in a month (for example the 31st in June), the reminder is sent on the last day of that month.
• The email's subject is "[Policy Reminder]" followed by the group and document names. It contains the group, the document, your note and a link to the file.

The Reminder column shows the date, the frequency and the Next send date (or Not set). Dates are shown as dd/mm/yy.

Send Test Email sends a sample reminder straight away to the addresses in Recipients, with "[Test]" at the start of the subject — useful for checking the addresses before you rely on the reminder.

Audit trail

The Audit Trail at the bottom of the Policy Group Files box lists the 20 most recent changes to the group — who added, removed, renamed or replaced a document and when. Saving a document's Advanced settings is listed as "adv_update" and sending a test email as "test_email".

Sharing a group with other websites

Where to find it: the Sharing (Cross‑site) box on a group's edit screen

Tick Enable sharing, then select Update. If Shared key was blank, a key is created when you save with sharing ticked. The Example consumer shortcode (on another site) in the box then includes your key, ready to copy with Copy Shortcode (before a key exists it shows YOUR_KEY instead). Give that shortcode only to the schools that should display the group — anyone with the key can read the list of documents.

Unticking Enable sharing stops other websites showing the group once their saved copy expires (15 minutes by default). The key is kept, so ticking it again restores access for sites already using it.

Showing another school's shared group

Where to find it: Smart Policy Manager → Cross-site Preview and Add Cross-site Policy Group

To display a group that another school has shared with you, paste the shortcode they give you into a Shortcode block on your page. To check it first, go to Add Cross-site Policy Group and fill in:

Select Save. The group is added to Saved Previews on the Cross-site Preview page. Preview shows its documents, and the Actions column has a ready-made shortcode with a Copy Shortcode button. Saved previews belong to your own account — other administrators do not see them.

A shared group always shows the other school's current documents. Because of the cache, a change they make can take up to 15 minutes (the default Cache TTL) to appear on your website.

Shortcode options

Example: [smart_policies id="689" orderby="added" order="desc"] lists the newest documents first.

Troubleshooting

I cannot see Policy Manager in the menu

Policy Manager is only available to administrators. Ask an administrator to add or update your documents.

A file was not added to the group

Only PDF, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, plain text, RTF and OpenDocument files up to 50MB can be added. When none of the chosen files could be added, the message names the file and the reason, e.g. "disallowed file type" or "exceeds 50MB limit". When only some could be added, the others are added without any message, so check the table for missing documents. Convert the file (for example save it as a PDF) and try again.

The group title shows "Private:" on the website

show_title="true" shows the group's title, and a group saved as Private — the default — has "Private:" in front of its title. The shortcode copied from Cross-site Preview includes show_title="true", so a shared group that is private on the other website shows "Private:" too. Either leave show_title out and put a heading on the page yourself, or change the group's Visibility to Public and select Update.

A shared group shows nothing on the other website

• Check Enable sharing this Policy Group to other sites is ticked on the group and that Update was selected.
• Check the other website's shortcode uses the current Shared key — if you changed the key, every site using the old one stops working.
• On the other website, administrators see an error message in place of the list (for example "Remote site returned an error."); visitors see nothing. A shared group with no documents also shows nothing.

Reminder emails are not arriving

• Open Advanced and check a Month and Day are set, Frequency is not None, and the Recipients are valid email addresses.
• Use Send Test Email. If the test arrives, the settings are correct and the reminder will be sent on its Next due date. If it does not, check the recipient's junk folder.
• If the test arrives but reminders never do (the Next date does not move on after a due date), contact Realsmart support.

I removed a document by mistake

Remove only takes the document out of the group; the file is still in the Media Library. Use Add from Media Library to add it back, then set its display name and reminder again. The Audit Trail shows what was removed and by whom.

Import from page found no PDFs

Policy Manager only looks at the main content of the page, not the header, footer or menus, and only picks up links to ".pdf" files. Check the address opens the page that lists the files and that they are linked as PDFs.

The flipbook cover is blank or will not open

The Magazine layout previews PDFs only. Other file types show a plain cover and open in a new tab when selected.