Manage Communication Policies

Adding a new Communication policy

To add new communication policies navigate to the Communication Policies in the Verba web interface Policies > Communication Policies.

On the top right corner of the page click on Add New Communication Policy as shown on the image below:

Defining a Communication Policy

The Communication Policy screen consists of multiple panels:

Communication Policy

  • Enabled - If set, then the policy is active, it will be evaluated by the engine
  • SequenceThe policies will be evaluated one by one based on the sequence number assigned to them. The evaluation starts with the lowest sequence number and goes in ascending order.
  • Name - You can set any name, only visible for policy administrators
  • Description - Short description for the administrators to know what the policy does

Validity

You can specify when the policy should be evaluated and when it is not.
You can leave this block empty - and all days of the week checked - in that case, the policy will always be evaluated by the engine. (This is the default setting)

  • Time Zone - Your time zone (Needs to be set, because the Verba servers may reside in another time zone, based on your system topology)
  • Valid From-Until - You can set the exact dates, or you can click on Never expires
  • Time of Day - You can set when it should be active every day
  • Days of Week - The policy will be active on these days every week

Participants

You can define Participant A and B here.

  • Users - To select Users start typing their name, and a drop-down list will appear with the available options.
  • Groups - To include Groups, move them from the left pane (all groups in the system) to the right pane (selected groups) with the >> button. To delete the selection, use the << button.
  • Addresses - You can define any Phone number or SIP URI here, even if it is not present in the Verba system (Outside phone numbers, calls coming from the PSTN network, for instance)
  • Domains - Ability to set a specific domain (For example in the case of federated calls you want to block calls to the microsoft.com domain)
  • Regex - Standard Regular Expressions

Chaperones

Under Chaperones, you can define Users and Groups whose presence in conferences enables all communication, even those that would otherwise be blocked by this policy.
You can select Users and Groups the same way as in the case of Participants.In the table below, the different modalities are shown per communication system and what modality can the chaperones feature be utilized with.

CiscoAction allowed if Chaperone is presentSession terminated if Chaperone leaves
voiceNoNo
videoNoNo
IMYesYes
file transfer*Not ApplicableNot Applicable
screen shareYesNo

*The file transfer operation is not available in Cisco Jabber conferences.

SfB/LyncAction allowed if Chaperone is presentSession terminated if Chaperone leaves
voice Yes Yes
video Yes Yes
IM Yes Yes
file transfer No No
screen share Yes Yes
content shareYesYes

Presence Policies

In the Verba Ethical Wall solution, Communication Policies include Presence Blocking and Contact List Blocking functionality.

Presence blocking

The presence status of users In Cisco Jabber and Lync/SfB clients can be hidden from other people. This means that users will always show up as offline for other users if their presence should not be shown.

Contact List blocking

When using the Contact List blocking functionality, users are not able to see specific blocked users in their SfB client when running searches for contacts. This means that the existence of certain users can be hidden from others.You can set the presence or contact list blocking mode:

  • Block
  • Allow - used to explicitly allow presence even if lower priority rules would block presence between two users

You can also set the direction of the rule:

  • Bidirectional between A and B
  • A to B
  • B to A

Read more in the Presence Policies article.

Session Policies

In the Verba Ethical Wall solution, Communication Policies include Session Policy functionality.

You can set session policy mode

  •  Block
  •  Warn - session will be allowed, but a notification will be sent
  •  Block and Warn - session will be blocked, and a notification will be sent
  •  Allow - used to explicitly allow presence even if lower priority rules would block presence between two users

You can also set the direction of the rule:

  • Bidirectional between A and B
  • A to B
  • B to A 
The following example allows IM and voice calls, but blocks all other modalities between the Participant A and B groups:

Read more in the Session Policies article.

Content Policies

In the Verba Ethical Wall solution, Communication Policies include Content Policy functionality.

You can add multiple Content Policies to a Communication Policy.

Content policy actions include

  • Block
  • Notify - message will be allowed, but a notification will be sent
  • Redact - allow the communication, but redact/edit the message to mask the matching information

An example list of Content Policies set on a Communication Policy:

In the case of content policies, you can also set the direction in which you want the policies to take effect between Participant A and B (unidirectional or bidirectional).

To see how to manage and configure your Content Policies, read the List Content Policies and Manage Content Policies articles.

Read more in the Content Policies article.

Notifications

As you can see in the Session Policies section, you can define for each modality if you want to send notifications when the given communication takes place.
Under the Notifications tab, you can set in what way notifications should be sent and to whom. If both IM and email notification are selected, then the email modality will only be used if an IM cannot be sent.

Possibilities include

  • A - Participant A
  • B - Participant B
  • Chaperone - The Chaperone of this policy
  • From Party - The party that started the call/initiated the action
  • To Party - The Party that received the call/was the target of the action
  • 3rd Party - If you select this checkbox, you can set any email address or IM address to where the notifications should be sent

Select the Notification Template that you want to assign to this communication policy.

Disclaimers

In the Verba Ethical Wall solution, Communication Policies include Disclaimer functionality.

You can set Disclaimer Templates to be attached to all Instant Message communications of various parties.

Select the Disclaimer Template that you want to assign to this communication policy.