The policy viewer is a convenient tool you can use to view each policy, the settings associated with each policy, and how they relate to each other. The policy viewer is also versatile because of the number of ways in which you can view policy documents.

For example, you can view the settings for each policy, the settings by functional area, or the settings assigned to a specific users. You can also view effective policies on different levels in the policy hierarchy, which helps you to understand the impact of changing a policy setting. You can view policy documents using one of two views, By Hierarchy and By Settings.

The policy viewer has three panes. Depending on your selection in the first pane, the results in the second pane differ. The last pane always shows either an actual policy settings document or an effective policy settings document, based on your selections in the first and second panes. You can edit a policy settings document in the policy viewer. You cannot edit an effective policy because the settings are derived settings.

Example of using the By Settings view

The administrator at the Renovations company wants to use the policy viewer to:

• View all policy settings documents in a domain
• View all policies that use a selected policy settings document
• View and edit a policy settings document
• View the effective policy settings

• Selects the By Settings view in the policy viewer and looks in the first pane to view all policy settings documents, grouped by administrative area.
• Selects one of the policy settings in the first pane. All policies that use that policy settings document display in the second pane. The actual policy settings document displays in the last pane, where it can be edited.
• In the second pane, selects one of the policies. The effective policy settings display in the last pane. These cannot be edited.

The administrator at the Renovations company wants to use the policy viewer to:

• View the policy hierarchy for the Renovations domain
• View the policy hierarchy for an Notes® user in the Renovations domain
• View the settings documents used by each policy
• View the differences between the effective policy and the policy settings for a policy settings document

• Selects the By Hierarchy view in the policy viewer and in the field Show policy hierarchy for, selects Renovations domain. Looks in the first pane to view the policy hierarchy.
• In the field Show policy hierarchy for, selects Specific User, and then selects the name of a user to view the user's policy hierarchy in the first pane.
• Selects a policy in the first pane to view the policy settings documents used by the selected policy in the second pane.
• In the second pane, selects one of the policy settings documents. The administrator can switch from the effective policy settings to the actual policy settings document in the last pane.
• To see how changing a policy setting affects the effective policy, the administrator can edit the policy settings document and then switch views in the last pane.

Related tasks
Using the Policy Synopsis tool to determine the effective policy

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