Earlier this week, a client presented me with this challenge:
We have a process that happens in another software application, but we’d like to refer a user of that system to our policies in policyIQ. But if someone clicks on a link to a policy in policyIQ, they are being asked to log in with a user name and password. What do we do for those people who are just read-only users and don’t have their own user name and password? Do we have to set up separate user accounts for everyone?
First of all, huge kudos to this team for using those links to pull together software applications that serve different purposes. Secondly, I love that they reached out to ask the question. In this case, the answer is easy to implement!
Create a link directly to a policyIQ page that requires no log-in
What they want is a link that goes directly to a policy in read-only mode, but never asks a user to login. This is ideal if you are linking to content in policyIQ from an external source.
- Confirm that a Read-Only account has access to your page
In order to create this type of URL, you first need to be sure that you have at least one “Read-Only” user account that is able to view the page to which you want to link. These “Read-Only” accounts are free policyIQ users, so if you don’t have one already set up, you can do so without increasing your license.
- Locate the page you want to link to in the Home module
- At the bottom of the page, click on the Page ID to bring up the link window
- On the link window, select the read-only account (if more than one exists) that you want use
- Copy the URL provided
- Paste that URL into any external source for access to the page!
Seriously, how easy was that?!
Keep security in mind: The link that you are creating is already embedding the log-in details right within the URL – so if the link is shared, anyone clicking on it will have access to the content. Content that is highly sensitive and secured would typically not be shared in this manner, because you want to keep tighter control over who can see it.
For a little added security around your read-only accounts, you are able to define which IP addresses (the address of someone’s specific computer) are allowed to access policyIQ using that account. Your company’s network has a range of IP addresses assigned – and restricting to just this range of address will prevent outside access, even if that URL should be shared externally.
If you have any questions about how to implement these URLs, contact us and we’ll be happy to help you!
