► Read and Understood Acknowledgement Blank Page - All Browsers

If users are experiencing issues with accessing our App to Acknowledgement reading documents, please ensure you whitelist the following domains used to load the required scripts:

cdnjs.cloudflare.com and unpkg.com

► Error: The remote server returned an error: (404) Not Found.

If you receive emails relating to 'Error: The remote server returned an error: (404) Not Found' this error can be caused having renamed a SharePoint site that has the Read and Understood App installed.

When using Microsoft Client Object Model, Read and Understood has to provide a URL to the site for authentication. If the site has been renamed then the URL to that site would have changed.

Please raise a support case with us and we can get the App Site URL updated support@spadditions.zendesk.com.

► Read and Understood Acknowledgement Blank Page - (Mac or iOS)

If users get a blank screen when acknowledging documents on an iOS device using Safari/Edge/Chrome, you will need to follow these steps to turn off Prevent cross-site tracking.

Click Settings > Safari.
Locate section Privacy & Security then Deselect the option “Prevent cross-site tracking”.

If users get a blank screen when acknowledging documents on a Mac in Safari, you will need to follow these steps to turn off Prevent cross-site tracking.

In the Safari app on your Mac, choose Safari > Preferences, then click Privacy.
Deselect the option “Prevent cross-site tracking”.

► 'Your SharePoint admin doesn't allow site collection admins to update app permissions'

You may see this message below when attempt to grant the Read and Understood application Permission to the SharePoint site.

The solution is to use PowerShell to disable the SiteOwnerManageLegacyServicePrincipalEnabled option

Connect-SPOService -Url https://domain-admin.sharepoint.com Get-SPOTenant | Select-Object SiteOwnerManageLegacyServicePrincipalEnabled

To fix this run the following command.

Set-SPOTenant -SiteOwnerManageLegacyServicePrincipalEnabled $true

Additional information on Micrsoft PowerShare for SharePoint online is available https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/powershell/sharepoint/sharepoint-online/connect-sharepoint-online.

► No Notifications Sent for a Newly Enabled Library

Read and Understood will not send any notifications for newly enabled libraries unless you perform one of the following actions:

Update an existing document or create a new document. This will trigger a notification for that document
Enable the Onboarding option 'All group members on first use' on the Document selector for which you want to immediately send notifications for. In the To recipient field use a Group that has the users you wish to send notifications to.
Configured at least one Document Selector for the Library

► External (unlicensed) Users Receiving Read and Understood Acknowledgement Requests

It is possible to send external unlicensed users acknowledgement requests, by following this simple approach:

The Users must be invited via Azure Active Directory, it is not enough to just to change sharing permissions on a file in SharePoint
We recommend you manage the users throughd an Azure AD group once they have accepted the invite.
Within Read And Understood, add the Group to a Document Selector rule that targets the documents you want them to acknowledge reading.
Provde the Group permissions to the SharePoint site/Library/Folder that hosts the documents they're expected to read.

User acknowledgements will behave exactly the same way as internal users. All reports will identify the users by their external email address.

► 401 Unauthorized when accessing the Read and Understood App

If you have enabled IP Address blocking on your 365 tenant it is likely that this will impact on third party app like Read and Understood from communicating externally. More information is provide in this Microsoft article Control access to SharePoint and OneDrive data based on network location

► Users First, Last, Email and Account status not reflected in App

For the app to pickup changes to a user details such as First, Last, Email or Account status, you must provide the app with Azure access. Our documentation provides detailed steps on this process Integrate with Active Directory...

Users are typically managed through Azure Active Directory and those changes are then sync'd to SharePoint User Profile Manager, neither the Read and Understood app has access to without being provided access.

► Support for Users Out of Office (Presence)

Microsoft provide a Graph feature Presence that enable delegated users access to read the presence of an employee. Unfortunately, this feature is not currently supported by App Permissions and as such we cannot currently access that information.

It is our intention that once Microsoft extend the functionality of Presense to allow App access, we will consider using this for User Acknowledgements. We could then feed this back into the reporting to highlight users that were unavailable for long duration for the acknowledgement process.

► Support for Distribution Lists and 365 Groups

Distribution lists are not supported in the App. We took the decision that permissions in SharePoint cannot be granted to Distribution Lists and therefore, there was a greater risk that users, while they could be emailed, might not have access to the SharePoint library and documents.

Microsoft recommend the use of Office 365 Groups over Distribution Lists and it is possible to convert existing Distribution Lists to Office 365 Groups.

Office 365 Groups can be used for access to SharePoint to grant access.

IMPORTANT: when using Groups it is important that you enable the option 'Allow messages from people inside and outside my organization', otherwise any messages we attempt to send will be bounced and not received.

► Warning Message in App to 'DisableCustomAppAuthentication'

When the loading the App you may be presented by a warning from the App regarding DisableCustomAppAuthentication. An option, by default, was enabled in new tenants in 2021 which blocks third-party apps from loading. You will need to disable the option using PowerShell, we recommend PnP PowerShell and running Set-PnPTenant -DisableCustomAppAuthentication $false more information provided here on running PowerShell

► Acknowledgment Requests for Links to other Content

It is possible to have acknowledgement requests for 'Links' within a SharePoint library. Occassionally, you may refer to content either elsewhere in SharePoint or an external site. You can send acknowledgment requests for this content, however we recommend you follow the process shown in this video.

Important: when creating links for SharePoint links, do not use Sharing Links as these links will go through redirection so may not behave as expected.

► Test Employee Understanding of the Document they are Required to Acknowledge Reading

Read and Understood previously included a 'Questionnaire' feature that provided a mechanism to have the Employee, as part of an Acknowledgement request, to answer questions about the updated document.

We chose to depricate this feature, however if you think this is a feature you would want then we would be interested in your feedback. We are constantly look to evolve and improve Read and Understood and many enhancements we have made, such as on-boarding have come about through our valued customer feedback.

Why did we remove it? Customers believed in the importance of employees reading the document. It was easy, should an employee choose to, simply search the document to answer the questions. This shouldn't be a test but opportunity to impart knowledge so employees are equiped with the tools they need to do their job.

Lastly, if you only want users to read the changes within a document, then our customers use Track Changes to highlight what has been updated.

► Emails not received by recipients

It is imperative that you whitelist readandunderstood.com in your Microsoft Exchange. Failure to do so will result in some, possibly all, emails being filtered before reaching the intended recipient. In addition, also whitelist zohobooks.com as monthly invoices will be sent via that domain.

If using our new Office Mail plans then you are still required to complete this should you ever exceed your email send limit imposed by Microsoft or for other Application warnings.

► PowerShell - Security Policy Change

A Microsoft security policy change to SharePoint online prevents SharePoint add-ins from using App Only access.

Since August 2020 newly created SharePoint tenants have ACS authentication disabled by default enforced by the security policy change and fail with an Unauthorized error.

This document provides a script to download so that you can Disable this feature..

► Why do we not send emails using Exchange on Free Plans?

Customers can choose one of our paid plans to use a 365 mail account in their tenant to send employee acknowledgement request emails. For customers using the Free plan, we send all emails using a 3rd party (Mandrill) as this provides the easiest configuration and setup.

► Renaming a file and not send a Read and Understood email notification

There are a number of ways in which updates to the file name can be made to files in SharePoint, most of which will result in a new Read and Understood email notification. However, if you want to change a file name and not send a notification, then this is possible by opening the file in a Microsoft Office application (Word, Excel...) in the Browser and rename the file that way. This doesn't not cause SharePoint to log this as a file version change.

When renaming files through the Library context menu, document grid or information panel, then all of these actions would cause a version update on the file in SharePoint. As a result, Read and Understood will pick up this change and process it.

► What is a Read and Understood Summary Report Recipient?

We introduced the concept of a Summary Owner Recipient as a way of tracking and managing document acknowledgements. We set the Summary Owner Recipient within a Document Selector. When the acknowledgement cycle completes will email the Summary Report Recipient to provide them with details on who did or did not Acknowledge Reading. In addition, if there have been errors notifying someone to acknowledge a document then again this information is provided to the Summary Report Recipient who can decide how best to act.

Reporting, such as the Summary Owner Recipient report is geared towards getting visibility of just the documents they are responsible for.

As a guide the Summary Owner Recipient could be a company compliance office or, and this may be decided based on your site structure, a department manager if the structure is department based.

The Summary Owner Recipient is not necessarily the author, more a person who has overall responsibility for the content.

► How long should we give users to complete an acknowledgement request?

This question crops up a lot. While we might be keen to put that new updated document out and get an immediate response, it will be decided by the type of document/s you are updating/creating. For example:

A company policy

This type of document is important to how employees perform their jobs, however we must make sure this information is made available to all employees. In such a case, we should factor in holiday leave or possible staff sickness to ensure that when the employee returns to work that have sufficient time to read the document and complete the acknowledgement request. As a guide, we would recommend a minimum of 21 days (3 weeks) for company policies, procedures etc.

A project document

While working on projects you may need information to be read much quicker, perhaps within a much shorter timeframe - 1 or 2 days. In addition, when using content types with projects you can have different Document Selectors based on the content type so for some document just send a notification, or for the more critical project files, send an acknowledgement request.

► When employees leave your company

When users leave a company but their account remains in a SharePoint or Azure Active Directory group, Read and Understood will continue to attempt sending notifications to that user until they are removed.

For customers using our new onboarding features, by removing a user from a Group allows the Read and Understood Add-in to track when they left and, 'should' they return, apply the rule as to whether they should be required to re-read all documents. This typically works great for contractors that may come and go.

► Guide to Deciding if you need a Free or Paid plan

Assuming you have 100 users to receive an acknowledgement request for a single document. They will have 3 weeks to complete the 'Acknowledge read request' and during this time 2 reminders will be sent including an overdue email to notify those users who did not complete the request in time. Lastly, a summary email will be sent to the Summary Report Recipient. The assumption is that after each notification 50% of those that had not previously acknowledged do complete the request.

Day 0: Document updated to trigger the Read and Understood process. Overnight an email is sent to all 100 users

Day 6: Overnight email sent to 50 users still to acknowledge

Day 13: Overnight email sent to 25 users still to acknowledge

Day 20: Overnight email sent to 12 users that failed to acknowledge. Owner summary email sent to user.

In total, 187 emails were sent for the single document update. While this is a guide, the actual number could be within the region of 101 to 401, assuming either everyone acknowledged within the first week or no one acknowledged the request.

Companies will vary in size as will the target audience expected to acknowledge reading of the new/updated documents. This scenario will help you to better estimate the monthly Read and Understood notifications and whether a Free plan is appropriate for your usage.

► Controlling Notifications of Updated Documents

Consider a scenario whereby you want to make changes to a document that may involve different contributors to the document.

Read and Understood sweeps the enabled libraries to identify which documents have been updated, to then put targeted documents into lifecycle and start the notification process. However, some documents may require an authoring process that may take many days. To stop Read and Understood putting a document into lifecycle too early you have the following options:

If you have updated the document in error, or simply want to make changes the following day it is possible to delete the document from the Notification Process from within the Settings list > fast-track/Manage option where you will see the document ready for notification. Simply delete it and it will not be added to the lifecycle until it is next updated.

For company documents that have a more complex review and update process, such as company policy, we recommend you use the SharePoint feature to enable Minor and Major version on its library. When working on the document, work with minor versions, and only when you are ready for the notification to be sent, check it in as a major version. This Microsoft Article explains the Major and Minor Versions. Read and Understood is aligned with this approach as the way to manage how documents are controlled before being made available to a wider audience.

► Deleted content enabled for Read and Understood

When content, such as a document, library or site is deleted and that content was targeted by Read and Understood the document owner will be notified. In such circumstances the email notification will provide a link to the Read and Understood settings list where it will be possible to delete the 'Document Selector' targeting the deleted content. When the Document Selectors are removed for the deleted content the notification emails will stop. If the deleted content is restored Read and Understood will continue to process updates and notifications.This article provides additional information about deleted content targeted by Read and Understood.

► Nested Active Directory Groups

Nested group support is now supported by the read and understood app. If you installed Read and Understood prior to March 2024, then you need to enable the option within app in the 'Site Adminstration'.

► How do I manage who can Read and/or Edit the Read and Understood Document Selectors

It is possible to adjust the permissions for who can read and/or edit Document Selectors at either site or library level. This link provides additional information on how to do this

► "Read and Understood access restored for Site Collection" email sent when site collection has just one enabled deleted library

This is a known issue and scheduled to be fixed.

► Inherit for a Mail Template Document Selectors overwrites previous values

This is a known issue and scheduled to be fixed. When, for example, a Site Document Selector, is set to inherit an Email Template Document Selector then the previous values are overwritten. Email templates should only update the email templates and this issue is scheduled for resolution. We recommend you note the values prior to changing the inheritance and then resetting the values before saving.

► The ability to Fast-track a document has been removed now out of trial

The only time you can fast-track documents is during a trial period for evaluation purposes, this is so you don't have to wait for the elapsed date for each step to be performed. With fast-track it is possible to put a document through the notification lifecycle process more quickly - for evaluation purposes. However, in a live production setup, the option is removed otherwise this would skew the reporting and would not provide users the opportunity to respond to notification with the allotted time.

► The SharePoint 'Everyone except external Users' SharePoint Group is not supported

The people picker provided 'hooks' into the SharePoint people picker field and by default will allow for Everyone except external Users group to be added. However, this is neither a SharePoint or Active directory group and as a result, can not provide the Read and Understood with a list of 'users' to notify.

The use of this group could also be considered a risk. Assuming you had a large organisation of 1,000s of users and updated/created just 5 documents if the app was to generate a single notification for every user and the 5 documents this would exhaust the monthly inclusive amount. While this might be something you wish to do, it could also incur unexpected additional costs if done in error. If it is your intention to notify all users, we recommend you use an Active Directory security group that contains the users.

► Read and Understood add-in does not support Internet Explorer 11 (IE 11)

The current version of the add-in is developed using technologies that are better supported using modern browser technologies. For this reason we have opted to exclude support of IE 11 from the add-in. We would recommend up-to-date versions of Chrome, Safari, Firefox or Edge. Many other modern browsers are also supported.

► Read and Understood add-in does not support Incognito or Private browsing windows

When using the Read and Understood add-in we advise you do not use incognito or private browsing mode.

► Understanding information accessed and stored in/from your SharePoint Tenant sites

Read more here.