Related: Shared Controls
Overview
The Shared Policies feature is designed to streamline compliance policy management across multiple workspaces within a Global Hub. By centralizing policy creation and sharing at the Global Hub level, this feature simplifies compliance workflows, reduces redundancy, and ensures consistent policy application across workspaces.
Key Benefits
Eliminate Redundant Policies: Manage policies in one place and apply them across multiple workspaces.
Ensure Consistency: Standardize policies and approval workflows across the entire organization.
Improve Compliance Efficiency: Reduce the risk of non-compliance by ensuring all relevant workspaces have the correct policies.
Maintain Granular Control: Enable workspace-specific configurations while preserving central oversight.
How it Works
At the Global Hub Level
When logged into the "Global Hub" (fka "Account"), Account Admins will have access to (Shared) Policies.
From here, the Account Admin has access to all policies created and published across workspaces.
When landing on the new (Shared) Policies page, the first thing you'll notice is this list of policies contains a new piece of information, "Workspaces." In the screenshot below, this company's policies have already been shared with multiple workspaces. If you're configuring shared policies for the first time, you may only see 1 workspace per policy.
Creating a New Policy (and Sharing it with Workspaces)
From this page, you can create a new policy.
During the creation process (not fully pictured in these screenshots), you'll select the workspace(s) to share this new policy with.
When selecting Owners and Approvers (when applicable), you'll be able to select a user from any workspace that the policy is being shared with.
This way, you can have a user from Workspace Alpha serve as the "Owner", and a user from Workspace Beta serve as the "Approver".
Updating the Policy
Making Content Updates
To make any content updates to the policy, click "Open in a Workspace" and select one of the workspaces the policy is shared with to open the policy and make those changes.
Name/Description Changes
Updating the name or description of the policy can be changed directly from this view by clicking the edit icon next to "Policy Details."
Modify Sharing/Share with New Workspace(s)
To change the workspaces that a policy is shared with, or to share it with a new workspace, you'll click the edit icon next to "Ownership"
Owners and Approvers can be updated as well. Just as with creation, the users you can select for these roles come from the corresponding workspaces, so adding or removing a workspace may impact your options.
Linking Controls to the Policy
From the Shared Policy view, a policy can be linked to any control within any workspace by clicking the edit icon next to "Linked Controls."
Note that if you select a control that is shared with workspace(s) the policy is currently not shared with, the policy will inherit those workspaces (it will be shared with those new workspaces from the control).
When editing "Ownership" to change the workspaces the policy is shared with, you cannot remove workspaces that are shared with a policy through that policy being linked to a control.
In the example below, this policy is linked to controls that are shared with CJWS One, CJWS Three and CJWS Two. As a result, when the user attempts to edit ownership, none of those workspaces can be removed
If the user unlinks all controls that are shared with a workspace, only then can that workspace be removed from the policy.
In the example below, because the user removed the only control that was linked to CJWS One, CJWS Three, you can now remove that workspace from being shared with the policy.
At the Workspace Level
When logged into a particular workspace, you'll see all policies that pertain to that workspace only – either shared or not shared.
Editing Sharing is Prohibited
At the workspace level, sharing cannot be modified. That means that new workspaces cannot be added and existing workspaces cannot be removed.
This also means when linking a control to a policy, the only available controls will be those that are already shared with at least all the same workspaces as the policy.
In the example below, this policy is only shared with CJWS Three, so I will only see controls that are exclusively a part of CJWS Three.
If the policy was shared with CJWS One, I'd be able to choose from controls shared with CJWS One exclusively, CJWS Three exclusively, or CJWS One + CJWS Three.
Approval Flows
For a company with at least 1 shared policy, approval flow settings are enabled or disabled for all workspaces to ensure that settings are in sync.
The setting can be manipulated for all workspaces at the Global Hub level.
At the Workspace level, the setting is read-only
How would I use Shared Policies?
While the functionality was designed in a way to allow our clients to create share policies and associate them to controls however they see fit, a common use case for shared policies would be to associate it to a shared unified control pertaining to policies.
For example...
A Unified Control entitled, "Privacy Policy and Procedures" is shared with Workspace A, Workspace B, and Workspace C.
I create a Privacy Policy in Workspace A, and link it to "Privacy Policy and Procedures"
Through the link, the Privacy Policy is now shared with Workspace B and Workspace C (on top of Workspace A).
If a policy is intended to be shared without linking it to a control, the policy's shared workspaces could be edited directly via editing the "Ownership." Note that you can edit the ownership and then link it to a control, but that would be an extra step.