Activating policies

To start collecting specific information about your devices, activate one or more of the following policies:

NOTE Depending on the Absolute product licenses associated with your account, some policies may not be available.

You can view the collected information in Absolute reports and monitor your devices to ensure that they comply with your organization's policies.

To activate a policy:

Log in to the Absolute console as a user with Manage permissions for Policies and Licenses.
On the navigation bar, click and click Policy Groups.
On the Policy Groups sidebar, search for and then click the policy group that contains the policy you want to activate. The policy group's Devices page opens in the work area.
Click Settings.

The Settings page for the policy group opens showing the activation status of its policies. A grayed-out Inactive icon, such as , indicates that a policy is not activated.
Do one of the following:
- To activate the Application Resilience policy and start reporting on and repairing select third party applications installed on your Windows devices:
  1. Next to Application Resilience, click Configure.
  2. For each application policy you want to activate, click the Activation slider to set it to On.
    If you have not yet configured the policy configurations for the application, click Configure to select the applicable policy options before activating the policy.
    NOTE If an Absolute Ransomware Response license (base or add-on) is assigned to the policy group, you can activate up to two (2) policies. After two policies are activated, all other Activation sliders are disabled.
  3. Click Save and Apply.
- To activate the Hardware policy in the Global Policy Group and start collecting information about the hardware on your Windows, Mac, Android, and Chromebook devices, next to Hardware, click the activation slider to set it to On.
  NOTE For most accounts, the Hardware policy is activated by default in all policy groups. For other accounts, it is deactivated by default in the Global Policy Group, but activated in all custom policy groups and the Unlicensed Policy Group. Note that if you activate the policy in the Global Policy Group, you can't deactivate it.
- To activate the Custom Data policy and start collecting information defined by custom Data Points on your Windows and Mac devices, next to Custom Data, click the activation slider to set it to On.
  NOTE If you have not yet configured the Data Points to be collected, you need to add Data Points by configuring the Custom Data policy.
- To activate the Device Usage policy and start collecting information about when users are using their Windows, Mac, and Chromebook devices, next to Device Usage, click the activation slider to set it to On.
- To activate the Endpoint Data Discovery (EDD) policy and start scanning Windows and Mac devices using the policy's scan configurations, next to Endpoint Data Discovery, click the activation slider to set it to On.
  NOTE Before you activate the EDD policy, click Configure to edit the default policy configuration to suit the needs of the policy group's devices.
- To activate the Full-Disk Encryption Status policy and start collecting information about the status of the full-disk encryption products installed on your Windows and Mac devices, next to Full-Disk Encryption Status, click the activation slider to set it to On.
- To activate the Geolocation Tracking policy and start collecting location information from your devices, next to Geolocation Tracking, click the activation slider to set it to On.
- To activate the Installed Applications policy and start collecting information about the software applications installed on your Windows devices, next to Installed Applications click the activation slider to set it to On.
  If Absolute Insights is enabled for your account, you can also collect application usage information from your Windows devices.
  To collect application usage information:
  1. Select the Include Application Usage data checkbox that shows under the Installed Applications policy.
  2. In the dialog that opens, click Activate.
  3. Click Close to close the confirmation dialog.
  and view it in Absolute Insights.
  NOTE Application usage information can only be viewed in Absolute Insights; this information is not available in the Absolute console. To setup your account after you've purchased an Absolute Insights add-on license, see Getting started with Absolute Insights.
- To activate the Software policy and start collecting information about the software applications detected on your Windows, Mac and Android devices, next to Software, click the activation slider to set it to On.
- To activate the Web Usage policy and start collecting information about web activity on your Windows and Chromebook devices, next to Web Usage, click the activation slider to set it to On.
  IMPORTANT The Web Usage policy collects sensitive information about a user’s web browsing activity. Web usage data may be subject to privacy laws in your jurisdiction. Before activating the Web Usage policy, review and understand the applicable privacy laws. Also ensure that you activate the policy in only those policy groups that contain the devices you want to monitor.
On the Activate Policy confirmation message click Activate.
Click Close to close the confirmation message.

The policy is activated. If the policy is an Application Resilience policy, an App resilience policy activated event is logged to Event History.

If this is the first time that a policy is activated on a device, the applicable component of the Absolute agent is deployed to the device and activated. The component detects the available information on each device, encrypts the information, and uploads it to the database using a secure connection that is independent of the device's scheduled connection to the Absolute Monitoring Center. You can then view the detected information in Absolute reports and on each device's Device Details pages.