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Create your first policy

This walkthrough gets you from a blank tenant to a published policy. You’ll need to be signed in as a Policy Editor, Policy Lead, or Admin (the Viewer role cannot create policies).

1. Open the editor

Section titled “1. Open the editor”

From the top navigation, click Policies. On a brand-new workspace with no policies yet, you’ll land on a guided setup screen with three options:

  1. Import a document — upload a PDF, DOCX, or TXT and let PolicyBot extract individual policies you can review.
  2. Paste or link a source — paste text or a URL for PolicyBot to extract from.
  3. Write from scratch — a blank rich-text editor.

For your first policy, pick Write from scratch. (Once your workspace has at least one policy, this guided screen is replaced by an Add Policy button that goes straight to the blank editor — no chooser.) The import flow is covered separately in The Policy Inbox.

2. Fill in the required fields

Section titled “2. Fill in the required fields”

At minimum, you need:

  • Title — a short, specific name. If you leave it blank, InPolicy will auto-extract the first sentence of the body (truncated to 80 characters) when you save.
  • Body — the policy text itself. Minimum 10 characters. The editor is rich text (bold, italic, headings, lists, blockquotes, links) — not Markdown. Paste from Google Docs or Word and formatting is preserved.
  • Severity (1–5) — how important this policy is. Severity drives UI color coding in the extension and sort order in analytics.
  • Policy Area — the group this policy belongs to. If none exist yet, create one from Settings → Policy Areas.

You can also set:

  • Confidence threshold — how confident PolicyBot needs to be before it flags a violation. It’s a 10-pip control from 0.0 to 10.0 (shown as e.g. “8.0/10”); the default is 8.0. Higher = fewer but more certain flags.
  • Scope — countries and teams this policy applies to. Leave blank to apply to everyone.
  • Effective date / Expiry date — optional dates, kept for record-keeping. They don’t currently gate anything: a Published policy is checked by the extension regardless of these dates, whether you’re inside or outside the window.
  • Rationale — a note to other editors about why this policy exists. Visible to users with the VIEW_POLICY_RATIONALE permission.

3. Save as draft, or publish

Section titled “3. Save as draft, or publish”

The buttons across the bottom of a brand-new policy form are Cancel, Save as Draft, and Publish policy.

  • Save as Draft — creates the policy in DRAFT status. Drafts are visible to any signed-in tenant user — including Viewer — but are not checked by the extension.
  • Publish policy — publishes immediately. The request generates the policy’s embedding (used by violation detection) and only flips status to PUBLISHED once that finishes — typically a few seconds, during which the button shows a loading state. There’s no separate background step to wait for.

Who can publish: Publish policy is only shown to Policy Lead and Admin — those with the APPROVE_POLICIES permission. As a Policy Editor, you’ll have Save as Draft but the publish button won’t appear at all — a Lead or Admin needs to take it over the line.

4. Verify

Section titled “4. Verify”

After publishing, you’re redirected to the policy detail view. Check:

  • The status pill reads Published (not Draft).
  • The Severity, Policy Area, and Scope show the values you set.
  • The History tab has an INITIAL and PUBLISHED revision.

Publishing already waited for the embedding to finish, so the browser extension can flag text that conflicts with this policy right away — no need to wait.

5. Watch PolicyBot react (optional)

Section titled “5. Watch PolicyBot react (optional)”

If you’ve got the browser extension installed, open a new tab, type something that clearly contradicts the policy you just published, and wait a beat. A red underline should appear under the matching text. Click it to see the policy card. That’s the whole loop, end to end.

Next steps

Section titled “Next steps”