What people ask us about Beacon

Beacon is policy management and attestation that runs inside your Microsoft 365. Policy owners create policies by uploading a document or writing a policy page, send each version to an approver, and keep it current with review dates, new versions and retirement. Every employee gets one place to see which policies and certifications apply to them and sign off. Managers see who is overdue, and HR and compliance get the version history, signature records and audit trail auditors ask for. It’s also called the iomer Policy & Compliance Attestation Solution.

That’s where Beacon keeps uploaded policies too. The difference is that a library of files can’t tell you which ones are overdue for review, who approved each version, who has signed the current one, or what happens to sign-offs when a policy changes. Beacon keeps the files on SharePoint and adds that lifecycle and record around them.

A reply tells you who received the email, not who read the policy, and it gives you nothing to show an auditor six months later. Beacon replaces it with a typed signature tied to a specific version and a date, and a dashboard that shows completion without anyone chasing replies.

They’re related, not the same. Hazel is a searchable knowledge centre for large libraries of procedures, job aids and guides. Beacon is for the smaller set of policies that must be formally approved, signed by staff and signed again on a schedule (code of conduct, security, harassment, expenses), plus certifications with expiry dates. Many organizations keep procedures in Hazel and policies in Beacon.

If it gives you what you need, keep it. Ask what it doesn’t do: many sit outside Microsoft 365 with their own sign-in, and few also track certification expiry with manager escalation.

They could build a library with an approval flow. The harder parts are one lifecycle for both documents and pages, major versus minor changes deciding who signs again, a signature record per person tied to a version, review cycles with a needs-attention view, retirement that stops cycles but keeps the record, certification expiry, manager escalation, and an export that answers an examiner’s question. That design work is what Beacon brings.

Neither. Beacon is a solution accelerator. The lifecycle, approvals, versions, signatures, cycles, certifications and dashboard are already designed, so you don’t pay for a build from scratch. iomer then builds your organization’s version as a single deployment package, with your policies, owners, approvers, audiences, schedules, certification types and theme, and installs it in your tenant. It’s one of the iomer Solution Accelerators for SharePoint.

iomer does. We build a single deployment package for your organization and install it in your tenant with your Microsoft 365 admin, who approves the app and its permissions. There’s nothing for your IT team to assemble.

Different where it matters to you: your policies, owners, approvers, audiences, review and re-signing schedules, time to sign, certification types and theme. The foundation underneath (approval with separation of duties, versions, signatures by version, cycles, escalation and the audit trail) works the same way in every build. That’s deliberate: it’s already designed, and it’s what your auditors and IT team review.

Your administrator manages attestation cycles, certification types, lifecycle settings and the theme from Beacon’s console, and policy owners manage their own policies. For bigger changes, iomer builds a new version of your package, tests it and installs it.

Each person sees the policies assigned to them, with due dates, and a new version is marked as new with a summary of what changed. Overdue items show up on their manager’s team view. A signature records who signed which version and when; it isn’t proof that someone understood it, which is why staff can ask the owner a question before they sign.

Beacon asks for a typed full-name signature against the specific version shown. It’s a compliance record, not a guarantee of comprehension, and we say that plainly rather than oversell it.

Their manager can record a paper sign-off in Beacon. It’s marked as a paper form recorded by the manager, so the record shows how each signature was given.

Managers and approvers can name someone to cover for a set period. The cover ends automatically, and every action is logged under the name of the person who took it.

No. When an owner starts a new version, they mark it as a major or a minor change. Major changes ask people to sign again; minor changes such as wording, typos and links keep existing signatures.

No tool does that on its own. Beacon supports your compliance program by producing the approval, version and attestation record examiners ask for: a named approver for each version, review dates to keep policies current, and a signature from each person for each version.

Beacon records the approval step and keeps the approved version and date. Where your board or a committee makes the decision, the approver in Beacon is usually the person who confirms the approved version is the one being published. Beacon doesn’t replace the board’s decision or minutes. If you need several approval stages in Beacon itself, tell us early.

Yes. Each policy’s version history shows every version’s dates, author, approver and change summary. Sign-offs are recorded against each version, and the audit log exports every attestation to CSV, including signatures on versions that have since been replaced.

Retiring a policy stops its attestation cycles, cancels unsigned sign-offs and hides it from staff, but keeps every version and signature for the record, with the reason and any replacement policy.

Electronic signature laws in Canada and the US generally accept electronic acknowledgements like these. Beacon records who signed, when, and which version they were shown. Ask your counsel to confirm it meets your obligations; this isn’t legal advice.

In SharePoint lists, a document library and site pages in your own Microsoft 365 tenant, under your existing security, retention and data residency settings. iomer installs Beacon there for you, and there is no separate vendor platform.

No. Beacon has no separate database, server or vendor cloud, and nothing is hosted by iomer. Policies, versions, signatures, certifications and the audit trail stay in your tenant.

SharePoint Online and Power Automate, with a Microsoft 365 account for everyone who signs. Beacon’s flows use standard connectors. Dynamic Entra ID groups need Entra ID P1. Larger organizations may need a Power Automate Process licence for Beacon’s flows, which we size with you during planning. See Platform and IT for details.

Your Microsoft 365 admin approves the Beacon app and its Microsoft Graph permissions with us during installation. We go through the full list with your admin before anything is approved, so your security team can review it first.

E5, E3, Business Premium and F3 all include what Beacon needs, including Entra ID P1 for dynamic audiences and manually applied retention labels. Records that lock against edits and retention that starts when a version is replaced need E5 or a Purview add-on. See the plan table.

Beacon uses supported Microsoft interfaces: the SharePoint Framework, SharePoint lists and libraries, Microsoft Graph and Power Automate standard connectors. When Microsoft retired SharePoint alerts in July 2026, for example, Beacon wasn’t affected, because its notifications run through Power Automate. If a Microsoft change ever does affect it, iomer builds and installs a new version of your package.

Beacon is built from standard SharePoint and Power Automate parts, so removing it uses standard admin steps: remove the app, turn off its flows, and keep or archive the lists and library. Your policies and records stay in your tenant either way.

Everyone who signs in Beacon does. For people without one, a manager can record a paper sign-off.

It depends on how many policies we bring across, how your approvals and review cycles work, and how many certification types you track, so we scope it with you first. Once we’ve been through your requirements, we give you a work estimate and a written proposal. How pricing works.

Beacon, Hazel for procedures and Journey for onboarding are built the same way and delivered by the same iomer team, so a customer running one already has the site, the skills and the governance model for the next. Journey covers a new hire’s acknowledgements in their first weeks; Beacon covers policy sign-off year after year, for everyone.

Yes. Watch the 45-second tour now, with no sign-up, or book a 30-minute walkthrough set up with policies like yours.

Yes. Download the two-page datasheet or the four-page brochure. Both are PDFs with no form to fill in.