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Read-and-understood acknowledgements

An acknowledgement is a user confirming they have read and understood the current effective version of a controlled document. It produces a permanent, per-version record you can show an auditor as evidence of distribution.

Who this is for

Acknowledging is open to every user who can see an effective document. Administrators use the records to track who has confirmed.

When the acknowledge button appears​

The read-and-understood control appears on a document's detail page, and at the bottom of the full-screen reading page, only when:

  • The document is Effective (drafts, in-review, approved, superseded, and obsolete versions cannot be acknowledged), and
  • The signed-in user has not already acknowledged the current version.

On the reading page the button is hidden while you are viewing a historical version; the acknowledgement always records the current effective version, even if you read the document in another language. Once acknowledged, the button collapses to a confirmation showing the date and time of the acknowledgement.

Screenshot pendingDocument detail page showing the read-and-understood button, and the same view after acknowledging

How a user acknowledges​

  1. The user opens the effective document.
  2. They read the content (the Versions and history viewer is the comfortable reading surface for long documents).
  3. They select the read-and-understood control.
  4. A confirmation appears with the timestamp.

The acknowledgement is tied to the specific version that was effective at the time. If a new version later becomes effective, the document presents the acknowledge control again for the new version. Confirming one version does not silently cover later ones.

The acknowledgement record​

Each acknowledgement is stored once per user, per document version. The record cannot be edited or deleted; it is append-only, the same pattern used for approvals and training evidence.

Acknowledgements are append-only

An acknowledgement records who confirmed which version, and when. The record cannot be removed or altered afterward. Re-clicking is harmless: the system records a single acknowledgement per user per version, so a second confirmation does not create a duplicate. See the Compliance area for the append-only and immutability model.

Acknowledgement is treated as an operational event: it is expected to happen in large volumes, and the acknowledgement record itself is the evidence. For that reason the system records the acknowledgement durably without blocking the user if a secondary log write is slow.

What the record contains​

Every acknowledgement stores who acknowledged, exactly which version, when, and the IP address the confirmation came from. The address is recorded by the server, not sent by the browser, so it cannot be forged.

The system refuses an acknowledgement of anything other than the version currently in force, of a document that is not effective, and of a notice whose end date has passed. A record against a superseded version would evidence nothing while still looking like compliance in a report, which is worse than no record at all.