Zoho Cliq Policies: What They Are and How to Set Them

Zoho Cliq Policies: What They Are and How to Enable Them

Published by 1 Cloud Consultants, your Zoho partner in the UK and Ireland. Learn more about Zoho products with us.

Policies in Zoho Cliq are the rules an administrator sets for the whole organisation. They decide things like whether staff can chat with people outside the company, whether they can create channels without approval, and how strong passwords must be. This guide explains what they are, where to find them, and which ones matter most. It replaces an earlier note from February 2019 that only linked to Zoho's help, and spoke of five policies. Zoho has added several since.

Where to find them

An organisation administrator opens the Admin Panel and goes to Policies under Permissions. Older guides place it under Security, so look for Policies if your menu differs. Each policy can be switched on or off, and the choice applies to the entire organisation.

Policies override roles. A policy takes precedence over the permissions given to a role. If a policy is off, the matching ability stays blocked even for a role that has it switched on. So when something is not working as you expect, check the policies first. See Zoho Cliq: Channels for roles.

The main groups of policy

Group Examples
GeneralAllow people to request to join your organisation automatically. Allow users to turn off chat history. Allow users to create organisation-level channels without approval. Allow Cliq support to access your data for debugging.
External collaborationAllow people outside the organisation to view files your staff share. Allow staff to invite and work with external users in external channels, to join external channels run by other organisations, and to message, call, and meet external users directly. These can be enabled for regional or universal access.
Password policy and MFARules for password strength, and multi-factor authentication.

Zoho has reorganised the list over time and the exact wording and number differ between its guides, so treat the examples above as typical, not complete. Your own Policies screen is the definitive list.

The one most people ask about: chatting with external users

This is switched off by default. An administrator has to enable the relevant external collaboration policy before anyone in the organisation can chat with a vendor, client, or distributor. External channels also have limits: they are not available on the free plan, each paid licence allows up to five, and availability varies by data centre. See How to Chat with External Users and What Are External Channels.

Setting policies sensibly: our advice

This section is our own advice, not Zoho's.

  1. Start tight, and loosen with a reason. It is easier to allow something later than to explain a leak.
  2. Think hard about turning off chat history. If your industry has record-keeping duties, keeping history may be required. Check your obligations. This is general guidance and not legal advice.
  3. Keep channel approval on for larger organisations, so the channel list does not sprawl.
  4. Decide on external contact deliberately. Agree who may talk to outsiders, and what they may share, before you switch the policy on.
  5. Switch on multi-factor authentication for everyone.
  6. Write down what you set and why, so the next administrator understands the choices.
Need help? As a Zoho Partner serving the UK and Ireland, we can review your Zoho Cliq policies, roles and external collaboration settings against your security and record-keeping needs. Email zoho@1cloudconsultants.com or raise a support request with 1 Cloud Consultants.