In one sentence
Turn on Requires Acknowledgement on a controlled document and a distribution list activates — listed users see a acknowledge call-to-action, optionally gated by a quiz, and every signature is tied to the exact version they signed off on.
- An ack/quiz obligation lives on a specific approved version, and obligations stack — if a new revision still requires acknowledgement before everyone finished the last one, people owe both, each recorded independently.
- New revisions carry the obligation forward by default — the submit modal pre-selects the prior version's ack mode, reminder cadence, and quiz, so a minor edit can't silently drop a training requirement.
- Quizzes are optional but powerful: when one exists, users have to pass it before their acknowledgement is recorded, and a pending quiz auto-opens the moment they open the document.
For the user-facing learner experience and the org-wide reporting, see Training Hub and Training reporting.
Requires acknowledgement
Toggle Requires Acknowledgement on the document's edit page. Once on:
- The Distribution List panel becomes active for that document.
- Listed members see an acknowledge call-to-action when they open the document.
- If a quiz exists, they have to pass it before their acknowledgement is recorded.
The distribution list
The Distribution List panel sits in the document sidebar.
- Add org members individually via the picker.
- Remove members at any time.
- A member removed after acknowledging keeps their acknowledgement record — you lose the required status, not the history.
Acknowledgements track timestamp and (when a quiz is involved) the quiz pass status and score.
Obligations across revisions
An acknowledgement or quiz obligation belongs to the version that introduced it, not to the document as a whole. That has two consequences worth understanding:
- An open obligation survives a later no-ack revision. Say v3 ships with a quiz, and before everyone passes it you publish v4 as a minor typo fix that requires no acknowledgement. The v3 quiz obligation stays in force — people still owe it. You train on the change, not just on whatever the current text happens to be. The document's distribution panel always binds to the latest version that still requires acknowledgement, so the quiz never gets orphaned behind a trivial edit.
- Obligations stack. If v3's quiz is still outstanding when v5 ships with its own quiz, a distributed user owes both — and each completion is recorded independently against its own version, with its own score and signature. Completing v5 doesn't paper over an unfinished v3.
Carry-forward on a new revision
When you submit a new revision for approval, the Submit modal pre-selects the prior obligation's settings: the same ack mode (acknowledge changes / quiz), the same reminder cadence, and the existing quiz (auto-forked onto the new version). This is the default precisely so a small edit can't silently drop a training requirement that was in force.
It's still a default, not a lock — change the ack mode, cadence, or remove the quiz on the modal before you submit if this revision genuinely shouldn't carry the obligation. To close an obligation that a newer revision doesn't supersede, use the retire dashboard instead.
Training quizzes
A quiz is an optional knowledge check authored against a specific document. Only users with document-edit permission can author quizzes.
Authoring
- Open the document.
- Go to Training in the document actions menu.
- Add questions with multiple-choice answer options; mark which options are correct.
- Drag to reorder questions.
- Optionally attach per-question references — document-link anchors that let learners jump to the section the question draws from.
- Configure Passing % and whether the quiz is Required.
- Save.
The quiz is only active when the document itself has Requires Acknowledgement turned on. The authoring page warns you if that flag is off — turn it on or the quiz won't gate anything.
Quiz behavior
- Auto-opens on document open — when a distributed user opens a document they owe a quiz on, the quiz pops automatically. If they owe more than one quiz on that document, it chains through them oldest-first. The prompt is closeable, but it re-appears the next time they open the document until it's passed. It only ever covers that document's quizzes — it never reaches across to other documents.
- Answer shuffling — options are randomized per attempt, so learners can't memorize position.
- Shared quiz engine — document quizzes and internal courses use the same engine. See Internal courses.
The Acknowledgements panel at the bottom of the document remains the completion roster plus a manual Take quiz button, for anyone who closed the auto-prompt and wants to come back to it.
Versions and approved content
Quizzes are authored against the draft of the document but tied to the approved version when the document is approved. Acknowledgement records reference both the quiz attempt and the exact version the user signed off on — so an audit can reconstruct who saw what, when, against which version.
Acknowledgement tracking
The Acknowledgements section in the document sidebar lists distribution-list members and their state:
- Acknowledged (with timestamp)
- Not acknowledged
- Quiz passed (with score)
Quality Managers and Admins see this for any document; authors see it for documents they own.
Email reminders
When a version is approved with ack mode set to acknowledge changes or quiz, every user on the distribution list receives an email immediately. Follow-up reminders fire on a schedule the author picks at submission time — the Reminder cadence dropdown sits next to the ack-mode selector on the submit-for-approval modal, and (like the ack mode and quiz) it carries forward from the prior obligation by default on a new revision.
Six presets ship out of the box, from No reminders (initial email only) to Weekly for 8 weeks. The default is Weekly for 4 weeks. Each cadence has a hard stop — when the series ends, the artifact's History tab records a reminder_series_exhausted entry and no further emails fire.
Existing documents from before this feature shipped default to No reminders. Opt in per-document by editing.
See Acknowledgement & training reminders for the full cadence list, the daily-cron mechanics, and how distribution recipients are expanded through groups and roles.
Retiring an obligation
Because obligations are version-bound and stack, you occasionally end up with an open obligation that no newer revision is going to clear — a quiz on a version that's been overtaken, a requirement that's no longer relevant. The deliberate way to close one is the retire dashboard at Admin → Training → Acknowledgements (requires the Manage training permission).
The dashboard lists every ack-required document version with an outstanding count, split into Open and Retired. For any open obligation:
- Retire closes it. Retiring is per-version and requires a reason — the action is written to the audit trail, so an inspector can see who retired what and why.
- Retiring keeps every completed record — the people who already acknowledged or passed the quiz stay completed. It only stops the reminders and the auto-prompt for the still-outstanding users, and drops the version out of every "what do I owe?" calculation across the app.
- Reinstate reverses a retirement, putting the obligation (and its reminders and prompts) back in force.
Retiring is a one-way close on a specific version's obligation — it doesn't carry anything forward. If the requirement still applies but the content changed, publish a new revision and let carry-forward keep the obligation alive instead.