Acknowledgment tracking: prove who has read a document

Some documents aren’t just published — people are required to read them, and you are required to prove it. Safeguarding policies, health & safety procedures, HR handbooks, clinical protocols: if you’ve ever chased signatures on a paper circulation slip, acknowledgment tracking replaces it. You assign a document to user roles, each person confirms with one click, FileDeck chases whoever hasn’t, and the whole history exports as CSV evidence for an auditor.

FileDeck AI — acknowledgment tracking is part of the AI plan (from $119/year). See pricing. No AI provider key is needed for this feature — it runs entirely on your own site.

How do I ask people to confirm a document?

Edit the document and find Read & confirm (FileDeck AI) in the document settings. Tick the roles that must read it — for example Subscriber for all staff accounts, or a custom role your site uses — and optionally set a Confirm by date. Save the document.

That’s the whole assignment. Everyone who has an account in those roles is now expected to confirm, including people whose accounts are created later.

What does the reader see?

A logged-in user in an assigned role sees a prompt on the document’s page: "Please confirm you have read this document", the confirm-by date if you set one, and a single button — I confirm I have read and understood this document. One click records the confirmation, and the page then shows the date they confirmed instead of the button.

The confirmation is a plain form submission, so it works with JavaScript disabled and with any theme. Two things are always enforced: only users in an assigned role can confirm, and a user must actually be able to view the document (its access rules apply) — you can’t collect a confirmation for something the person couldn’t read.

How do people find what they still need to confirm?

Add the [filedeck_acks] shortcode to any page — an intranet homepage works well. Each logged-in user sees their own list of documents still waiting for their confirmation, with confirm-by dates, each linking straight to the document. When they’re done it says so: "Nothing to confirm — you’re up to date."

Where do I see who has and hasn’t confirmed?

Go to Documents → Acknowledgments. Every document with an assignment is listed with its roles, confirm-by date, and a confirmed count (for example 7 / 12 — a ✓ appears when everyone’s done). Click a document for the per-person view: each assigned user, their status (Confirmed with the timestamp, or Outstanding), and their email address.

How do reminders work?

Two ways:

• Automatically — once a week, FileDeck emails each person who still has outstanding confirmations. One email per person, listing everything they owe, with links and confirm-by dates. Nobody is emailed twice for the same list, and people who are up to date get nothing.
• On demand — click Send reminders next to a document on the Acknowledgments screen to nudge just that document’s outstanding readers right away.

Emails send via wp_mail, like FileDeck’s other notifications — if your host can’t send mail, install an SMTP plugin.

What happens when the document changes?

Every confirmation records which version of the document the person read (the document’s last-modified timestamp at the moment they confirmed). When you publish a meaningful update and need everyone to read it again, click Require re-acknowledgment on the Acknowledgments screen.

Everyone immediately shows as outstanding again — but nothing is deleted. The earlier confirmations are kept and marked superseded in the evidence export, so you can always show an auditor that staff confirmed the previous version too.

What does the CSV evidence contain?

Export per document (the CSV link on its row) or everything at once (Export all evidence). Each row is one person’s relationship to one document:

• document, user, email
• status — confirmed, outstanding, or superseded (a confirmation of an earlier version, retained after a re-acknowledgment)
• confirmed_at — when they confirmed
• document_version_of — the document’s last-modified date at the time, i.e. which revision they read
• confirm_by and assignment_started

Outstanding people appear as rows too — the export is a complete answer to "who was asked, who confirmed, who hasn’t", not just a list of successes.

Is this personal data?

Yes, and FileDeck treats it that way. A user’s confirmations are included in WordPress’s built-in personal-data export (Tools → Export Personal Data). They are deliberately not erasable through the privacy eraser: acknowledgment records are compliance evidence, retained the same way an HR system retains training records. Visitors without accounts are never involved — confirmations only exist for logged-in users you’ve assigned.

Common questions

Do readers need anything special? Just a WordPress account in an assigned role. There’s no extra plugin, app, or email verification step.

Can I assign an individual person rather than a role? Assignments are by role. For a small named group, create a role for it (any role editor plugin can do this) and assign that.

What if someone joins after I set the assignment? They’re covered automatically — assignments follow the role, so new accounts in that role show as outstanding and get reminders like everyone else.

Does confirming download the file? No — confirming and downloading are separate. The prompt sits on the document page alongside the download button, so the natural flow is read, then confirm.