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Advisory Policy explained

July 08, 2011 • Administrator       

Synopsis

Article

Advisory policies work in much the same way as Filtered policies with one important difference. Whereas users on a filtered policy who attempt to visit a blocked site will be presented with a "Request Unblock" button, users on an Advisory policy will be presented with an "Override" button.

If the user presses the button, they will then be able to visit the site in question.

With this ability it is clear that Advisory Policies are not intended to be used by the general user. They are intended for senior staff and administrators.

For example, one of your users may have been blocked from a site and have issued an Unblock Request. You, as an administrator, can use an Advisory policy to visit the site, override the block for yourself, and ascertain whether you are going to honour the request or not.

You may be wondering how long the override lasts for. It will last throughout a continuous session and for thirty (30) minutes after a user with the ability stops surfing the overriden site. After that, it expires.

Further more, the override only applies to the user that requested the override. So even if you have a couple of users using Advisory policies, they each have to issue an override separately.

Finally, users using the override facility have their visits logged as visits to blocked sites, so you can tell if anyone with the facility is abusing the privilege.

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