Introduction¶

The Policies module lets you set custom policies and rules. The results from the scan are communicated with reports and alerts to ensure that all content submitted by website content creators follows the same guidelines. It helps you to keep your content up-to-date and correct.

The module includes a large collection of pre-made policies, as well as the option to create custom policies.

For a quick overview of what this tool can achieve, see the intro video:

Policy Tool Management.

To add the Policies module to your plan, contact your sales representative.

Add a Pre-Configured Policy¶

This section gives information on how to add a new policy to the scan.

1. Click Global Policies Overview (the mallet icon) on the top menu bar of the Dashboard.

   

   Alternatively, click on the header of the Content Policies section.

   

   The Global Policies page opens.

2. Click Add new policy.

   

   The New Policy page opens.

   
3. Click Add Policy on the desired a policy template. The New Policy setup page opens.
4. From the options at the top of the page:

   • Select Settings.

     
     • Display this policy as:
       • Unwanted: Unwanted items are displayed with this tag.
       • Required: Required items are displayed with this tag.
       • Matches: Items that match are displayed with this tag.
     • Priority:
       • Low
       • Medium

       • High

         For more information, see the user guide article:

         Priority, Severity, Difficulty, and Likelihood.

     • Scheduled:

       Click to switch scheduled scanning for this policy OFF or ON:

       • OFF to include this policy in the scan manually.
       • ON to include this policy every time the website is scanned.
     • Choose where the policy should apply:
       • Global-All Domains: This policy will run on all domain scans.
       • Choose Domains: This policy will run on only selected domain scans.
         • Click in the field and select the domains from the drop-down list.
     • Rule Operator: In the Policy Rules section, tick the radio button to select the Rule Operator. The choices are:
       • Or
       • And

5. Select +Add rule to policy: Click to add a rule to the policy. The rules selection list opens.

   

6. Skip to the section in this document: Add Rules to Custom Policies.

   For more information, see the user guide article:

   Policies: Pre-made.

Create Your Own Policy¶

1. Click Create your own policy if there is no suitable pre-made option.

    

   Note

   Policies are not 100% compatible with Regular Expressions as source-code exclusions. The languages are different (Java and Ruby).

    

   

   The New Policy creation page opens.

   
2. Select the type of policy to configure:
   • All Assets (HTML and Documents)
   • HTML Pages
   • Documents
   • Links.

All Assets (HTML and Documents)¶

1. Click to select All Assets (HTML and Documents).

   

2. The New Policy configuration pane opens.

   

3. Select Settings from the options at the top of the page

   
   • Display this policy as:
     • Unwanted: Unwanted items are displayed with this tag.
     • Required: Required items are displayed with this tag.
     • Matches: Items that match are displayed with this tag.
   • Priority:
     • Low
     • Medium

     • High

       For more information, see the User Guide chapter:

       Priority, Severity, Difficulty, and Likelihood.

   • Scheduled:

     Click to switch scheduled scanning for this policy OFF or ON:

     • OFF to include this policy in the scan manually.
     • ON to include this policy every time the website is scanned.
   • Choose where the policy should apply:
     • Global-All Domains: This policy will run on all domain scans.
     • Choose Domains: This policy will run on only selected domain scans.
       • Click in the field and select the domains from the drop-down list.
   • Rule Operator: In the Policy Rules section, tick the radio button to select the Rule Operator. The choices are:
     • Or
     • And

4. Select +Add rule to policy: Click to add a rule to the policy. The rules selection list opens.

   
5. Skip to the section in this document: Add Rules to Custom Policies.

HTML Pages¶

1. Click to select HTML pages.

   

   The New Policy configuration pane opens.

   

2. Select Settings from the options at the top of the page:

   
   • Display this policy as:
     • Unwanted: Unwanted items are displayed with this tag.
     • Required: Required items are displayed with this tag.
     • Matches: Items that match are displayed with this tag.
   • Priority:
     • Low
     • Medium

     • High

       For more information, see the user guide article:

       Priority, Severity, Difficulty, and Likelihood.

   • Scheduled:

     Click to switch scheduled scanning for this policy OFF or ON:

     • OFF to include this policy in the scan manually.
     • ON to include this policy every time the website is scanned.
   • Choose where the policy should apply:
     • Global-All Domains: This policy will run on all domain scans.
     • Choose Domains: This policy will run on only selected domain scans.
       • Click in the field and select the domains from the drop-down list.
   • Rule Operator: In the Policy Rules section, tick the radio button to select the Rule Operator. The choices are:
     • Or
     • And

3. Select +Add rule to policy: Click to add a rule to the policy. The rules selection list opens.

   
4. Skip to the section in this document: Add Rules to Custom Policies.

Documents¶

1. Click Documents.

   

2. Select Settings from the options at the top of the page.

   

   Select the options that fit the policy you want to create.

   • Display this policy as:
     • Unwanted: Unwanted items are displayed with this tag.
     • Required: Required items are displayed with this tag.
     • Matches: Items that match are displayed with this tag.

   • Priority:

     • Low
     • Medium
     • High

     For more information, see the user guide article:

     Priority, Severity, Difficulty, and Likelihood.

   • Scheduled:

     Click to switch scheduled scanning for this policy OFF or ON:

     • OFF to include this policy in the scan manually.
     • ON to include this policy every time the website is scanned.
   • Choose where the policy should apply:
     • Global-All Domains: This policy will run on all domain scans.
     • Choose Domains: This policy will run on only selected domain scans.
       • Click in the field and select the domains from the drop-down list.
   • Rule Operator: In the Policy Rules section, tick the radio button to select the Rule Operator. The choices are:
     • Or
     • And.

3. Select +Add rule to policy: Click to add a rule to the policy. The rules selection list opens.

   
4. Skip to the section in this document: Add Rules to Custom Policies.

For more information, see the user guide article:

Policies: Pre-made.

Links¶

1. Click to select Links.

   

2. Select Settings from the options at the top of the page:

   
   • Display this policy as:
     • Unwanted: Unwanted items are displayed with this tag.
     • Required: Required items are displayed with this tag.
     • Matches: Items that match are displayed with this tag.
   • Priority:
     • Low
     • Medium

     • High

       For more information, see the User Guide chapter:

       Priority, Severity, Difficulty, and Likelihood.

   • Scheduled:

     Click to switch scheduled scanning for this policy OFF or ON:

     • OFF to include this policy in the scan manually.
     • ON to include this policy every time the website is scanned.
   • Choose where the policy should apply:
     • Global-All Domains: This policy will run on all domain scans.
     • Choose Domains: This policy will run on only selected domain scans.
       • Click in the field and select the domains from the drop-down list.
   • Rule Operator: In the Policy Rules section, tick the radio button to select the Rule Operator. The choices are:
     • Or
     • And

3. Select +Add rule to policy: Click to add a rule to the policy. The rules selection list opens.

   
4. Skip to the section in this document: Add Rules to Custom Policies.

For more information, see the user guide article:

Policies: Pre-made.

Add Rules to Custom Policies¶

1. Select +Add rule to policy: Click to add a rule to the policy. The rules selection list opens.

   

2. Drag and drop a rule into the Policy Rules section. The New rule pane opens.

   
3. Fill in the fields, each policy rule selection may have any combination of the following configuration options:
   • Rule name (required): Click in the text field and create a short description of the rule.
   • Search for content that: Click the drop-down arrow and select the type of text to search for. The options are:
     • Starts with: Scans for a match that starts with a specified character, word, or string.
     • Contains: Scans for a match that contains single characters, words, or phrases.
     • Contains Words: Scans for a match that contains specific individual words.
     • Ends with: Scans for a match that ends with a specified character, word, or string.
     • Equal: Scans for a match that is equal to a specified character, word, or string.

     • Regex: Scans for a match in a regular expression set of strings.

        

       Note

       Policies are not 100% compatible with Regular Expressions as source-code exclusions in Acquia Optimize. The languages are different (Java and Ruby).

        

     • Conforms with: Search for content that conforms with (free text field).
       • And does not conform with: Enter text to exclude.

     • CSS Selector: Enter a CSS selector.

        

       Note

       The Browser Extension does not yet support CSS selectors and therefore does not take any user-defined CSS selectors into consideration when highlighting matches.

        

       For more information, see the user guide article:

       Policies: CSS selectors.

   • Tick the box to indicate that the search will find pages that are: Containing or Not containing the query.
   • Rule operators: Skip to the full list of Rule Operators.
   • Rules: Skip to the full list of Rules.

   • Limit or exclude: Add CSS selectors to either limit the search within those values or exclude the snippets with the given inputs.

      

     Note

     The Browser Extension does not yet support CSS selectors and therefore does not take any user-defined CSS selectors into consideration when highlighting matches.

      

     For more information, see the user guide article:

     Policies: CSS selectors.

   • Limit search: Click the drop-down arrow ad select Limit search or Exclude.
   • Value: Enter a CSS selector value.

   • Characters: Use the drop-down list to select a value limit:

     • Less Than
     • Less than or equal
     • Greater than
     • Greater than or Equal
     • Equal.

     Enter a numerical value in the text field.

   • Meta Name: For the Meta Header option, enter a name in the field.
   • Meta Header Expr:
     • Drop-down list: Select a limitation for the Meta Header expression:
       • Starts with
       • Contains
       • Contains Words
       • Contains sentence
       • Ends with
       • Equal
       • Regex
       • Date age greater than
       • Date age less than.
     • In the text field, define the meta headers to match

• Click Save. The New rule-Text window closes and the Policy Rules page is visible.
• Click Save on this page to save all of the changes. A dialog box opens.
  • Enter the policy Name (required) and include a Note in the dialog box and then click Save.
• From the options at the top of the page, select +Add rule to the policy. Repeat the steps above to add as many rules as needed.
• Click Save. The Policy List is open and the new policy is present. A Policy scan begins automatically.

Edit or Remove a Policy¶

This section gives information on how to edit or remove a policy from the global policy list.

1. From the Acquia Optimize Dashboard (Home), click the URL for a website. The Statistics page opens.
2. In the Content Policies section, click the arrow. The Policies summary page opens.
3. From the menu on the left-hand side of the page, click Policy List. The Policy List page opens.
4. In the list, click the small icons under the rule name to view the rule attributes.

5. On the same rule as a policy, click Action and select Show on Global Policy List.

   

   The Policy List page opens.

6. On the same row as a policy, click Action and select:
   • Run policy again: Select to scan this policy again.
   • Edit: Select to edit the policy.
   • Clone: Select to make an exact duplicate of the policy.
   • Archive: Select to remove the policy from the active scan, but save it for later in the archive.
     • A dialog box appears, asking, "Are you sure, you want to Archive the Policy (policy name)?
     • Click OK to archive the policy or Cancel to cancel the action.
     • To retrieve an archived policy: From the Home page, click Global Policy Overview (the mallet icon on the menu bar). The Global Policies page opens.

       • Click Policy List.

         

         The Policy List page opens.

       • Click Action on the same row as a policy. The list expands.

       • Select Unarchive.

         A dialog box asks for confirmation, "Are you sure you want to remove the policy (policy name) from the archive?" Click OK to restore the policy to the active policies list, it will run on the next scan.

   • Delete: Click to remove the policy permanently.
7. Save the changes. A dialog box opens.
8. In the dialog box, edit the policy Name and Note if needed and then click Save.

History¶

The History Center stores all Policies issues and details from previous scans.

1. From the Domain Overview, click Select Domain. The Domain Overview page opens.

   

2. Click Open on the same row as the domain name.

   

   The Dashboard for the domain opens.

   

3. Click History Center (bar graph icon), located on the top menu bar.

   

4. The History Center landing page opens.

   
5. The page contains the following layout:

   • Domain: In the first field, click to expand the list of domains.

     
   • Click to select a domain from the list or switch to another domain.

   • Module: In the second field, click to expand the list of available modules.

     

   • Click to select Policies from the drop-down list. The Policies page of the History Center opens.

     • The topmost section gives information on the profile that is being used for the results shown.

     • Viewing as Profile: This shows the profile that is being used.

       For more information, see the user guide article:

       Add Profile.

     • Device: The type of device used.
     • Measure from: Distance from the server location.
     • Network speed: The speed of the network.
     • Check frequency: The frequency of the check.

     Important: The Dashboard always shows data with the default profile selected. To change this, select a new profile (click the drop-down arrow to see the available profiles). Please be aware that when you change the profile, the numbers on all three sections inside the Performance module update accordingly.

     • Graph with performance speed and date as well as a donut chart showing the average performance score.
     • Scan history results: This table shows valuable scan data from previous scans.

     • Scan history results: This table shows valuable scan data from previous scans.

       • Crawled at: Date and time of scan.
       • Pages crawled: Number of pages scanned.
       • Documents crawled: Number of documents scanned.
       • Domain compliance: Percentage of compliance achieved.
       • Comparison to average: The score of the website as compared with the average score within the industry.
       • Policies: The number of policy issues, broken down into category icons.
       • Changes since previous crawl: Percentage of changes made since the last scan.

       For more information, see the user guide article:

       History Center.

Rule Operators¶

This section gives information about the rule operators and how they can be used.

• Starts with: Policy will search for any snippet starting with the inserted text
• Contains: Policy searches for any instances of the inserted text (single word)
• Contains words: Policy searches for multiple words. Use commas to separate the words.
• Contains sentence: Policy searches for any instances of the inserted sentence or text.
• Ends with: Policy will search for any snippet ending with the inserted text
• Equal: Policy searches for an exact match for the inserted text or value. Example: “Monsido” - match. “About Monsido” - no match.

• Regex: Use regular expressions to define what should be searched for.

   

  Note

  Policies are not 100% compatible with Regular Expressions as source-code exclusions in Acquia Optimize. The languages are different (Java and Ruby).

   

• Conforms with: Use regular expressions to define the correct structure or form of the inserted value
• Less than: Find any results less than the inserted value
• Less than or equal: Find any results less than or equal to the inserted value
• Greater than: Find any results greater than the inserted value
• Greater than or equal: Find any results greater than or equal to the inserted value
• (Meta header) Date age greater than: Find meta tags older than the inserted value. Choose the time interval that matches the way your meta tag dates are written.
• (Meta header) Date age less than: Find meta tags younger than the inserted value. Choose the time interval that matches the way your meta tag dates are written.
• CSS selector: Policy searches for the inserted CSS selector.

Rules¶

This section gives information about rules and how they can be used.

• Page HTML: Search for text in the entire domains html
• Page URL: Set a rule for internal page URLs
• Text: Search for text excluding CSS and HTML tags
• Page title: Search for text in the page title (title is not the header)
• Page title length: Define when the rule should apply for the title
• Heading text: Search for text in headers (h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6)
• Heading text length: Define when the rule should apply header texts
• Meta header: Search for meta header tags, that matches query
• Meta header length: Define when the rule should apply for meta headers
• Link text length: Define when the rule should apply for link texts
• External link count: Define when the rule should apply for external links
• File size: Search files across selected domains
• Image size: Search for images across selected domains
• Image text: Search for images with this name
• Image text length: Define when the rule should apply for image texts
• Readability level: Search for text that is in compliance with a school degree.

Additional Resources¶

To add the Policies module to your plan, contact your sales representative.

For more information about the topics covered in this chapter, see the User Guide articles:

• Configure Policies
• Policies: Pre-made
• Policies: CSS Selectors
• Policies: Links
• Policies: Titles
• Policies: Placeholder text
• Policies: U.S. Telephone Numbers.

See Acquia Optimize for Developers for documentation and advanced help files including SDK information for developers.