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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 User role cannot create policies).

1. Open the editor

Section titled “1. Open the editor”

From the top navigation, click Policies. From the policies list, click New Policy in the top-right corner.

You have two ways to start:

  • From scratch — a blank rich-text editor.
  • From a document — upload a PDF, DOCX, or TXT, or paste a URL, and let PolicyBot extract individual policies you can review. That flow is covered separately in The Policy Inbox. For your first policy, start from scratch.

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 Mac app 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. The slider goes 0–100% in 10-percent steps; the default is 80%. Higher = fewer but more certain flags.
  • Scope — audience, countries, teams this policy applies to. Leave blank to apply to everyone.
  • Effective date / Expiry date — optional dates. Policies outside their effective window still publish, but the extension and Mac app will not flag violations against them.
  • 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 Add Policy.

  • Save as Draft — creates the policy in DRAFT status. Drafts are visible to editors but not to the general User role and are not checked by the extension or Mac app.
  • Add Policy — publishes immediately. Status becomes PUBLISHED, and an embedding job is kicked off in the background (used by violation detection). The job usually finishes inside 30 seconds.

Who can publish: Add Policy is only enabled for Policy Lead and Admin — those with the APPROVE_POLICIES permission. As a Policy Editor, you’ll have Save as Draft but the Add Policy button will be disabled or hidden — 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.

Within ~30 seconds the embedding job should complete — now the browser extension and Mac app will flag text that conflicts with this policy.

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”