“We are currently using DocRead to manage an employee handbook. We have a group of every user in the company we have sent the handbook out to a couple weeks or so ago.

This coming week we have 2 new users starting that we want to read and acknowledge our employee handbook. If I add the 2 new users to the existing user group that we have sent the handbook out to – go in the DocRead properties for the handbook – and resave – will the doc go out to the 2 new users? Will it go out to all the existing users plus the 2 new users?

What is the best way to manage this process for new employees that we want to read any existing DocRead document?”

The answer we gave was this : 

The Smart Move feature of DocRead manages new starters (and promotions / transfers / secondments etc.) really easily.

As soon as new starters are set up on your systems and are added to the relevant SharePoint Groups then the next time the DocRead automated timer jobs run (their schedules are controlled within SharePoint Central Administration and will have been configured during the installation and initial set up process) DocRead will assign new reading tasks to them (assuming they are added to groups that have reading tasks associated to them) – you don’t need to do anything!

So, if for example you sent your employee handbook to the “all users” group on Sept 1st and gave everyone 2 weeks to complete the task, hopefully by 15th Sept existing employees with have completed the task (or begin receiving overdue notifications if not). When your new starters arrive on Sept 16th and are added to the same “all users” group they will receive notifications to read the same document by Sept 30th. You do not need to revisit or resave the document properties.

Effectively you just need to make sure the new starters are added to the group that is required to read the document, DocRead takes care of the rest. You can read more here: DocRead-smart-move

It may be worthwhile revisiting the Timer Job Settings in DocRead Global Settings (section 2.6.2 of this guide) to make sure they are set to repeat at a sensible frequency for your organisation. Note: if they are set to ‘Run Now Only’ they will literally run once (when you last saved the page) and then not again until you reset them to hourly or daily.