Data and security · Signposting Toolkit Docs

This page describes what the toolkit does with your practice’s data and your staff’s accounts. It is written for practice managers and data protection officers. For the privacy notice, see signpostingtool.co.uk/privacy.

Practice data is kept separate

Each practice has its own:

cards, including your customised and practice-created cards
clinical review statuses and notes
appointments directory, highlight rules, high-risk and quick access buttons
Practice Handbook and workflows, if you have them
staff list and roles
usage figures

Staff only see practices they belong to. If someone opens one of your practice’s pages (its signposting page, a card, settings, handbook or workflows) and isn’t a member, the toolkit shows Access Denied. Anyone who isn’t signed in is asked to sign in first, then taken to the page.

Everyone in your practice can read its cards, so don’t put patient details, staff personal details or private phone numbers in card wording.

Images and PDFs uploaded to your cards, appointments or handbook are only served to signed-in members of your practice, and handbook files in a restricted category follow that category’s visibility.

The shared library cards, and images the Signposting Toolkit team adds to them, are the same for every practice. Your changes to a shared card apply only to your practice.

The Signposting Toolkit team (system administrators) can open any practice, to set it up and support it.

Signing in and sessions

Everyone signs in with their own email address and password at the sign-in page.
Passwords are stored as one-way hashes, not as readable text.
Once signed in, you stay signed in on that browser until you choose Sign out in the menu or your session ends.
Staff can change their own password from ☰ MenuPreferencesChange password…
When a password is changed or reset, that account is signed out everywhere, and has to sign in again with the new password.
Removing someone from your practice, or changing their role, takes effect on their next page or action. It doesn’t sign them out of other practices they belong to.

There’s no self-service “forgotten password” link. A practice admin can reset the password of someone who only belongs to practices that admin runs; otherwise the Signposting Toolkit team resets it. See Team and access.

Roles

Each person has a role at each practice they belong to:

Standard User: uses the toolkit (cards, appointments, handbook, approved workflows) and can send feedback. Can’t change cards or settings.
Practice admin: manages the practice’s cards, clinical review, settings and staff.
Signposting Toolkit team: system administrators, who can manage every practice and switch optional features on.

A standard user can also be allowed to edit particular Practice Handbook items. The full list is in Roles and permissions.

A practice admin can’t take over an account that is also used elsewhere: they can’t manage a system administrator’s account, and they can’t reset the password, name or default practice of an account that also belongs to a practice they don’t administer.

What the toolkit records

Record	What it holds	Who can see it in the app
Account activity	Sign-ins (and failed sign-ins to real accounts), new accounts, membership and role changes, Practice Handbook editing changes, password changes and resets, starting and ending a view of the toolkit as another role, and refused attempts to manage an account, with who did what and when	Nobody in the app; held by the Signposting Toolkit team for investigation
Card history	Each change to a card’s wording, who made it and when, and which AI model drafted it, if any	Held by the Signposting Toolkit team
Clinical review	Each card’s status, who last reviewed it, when, and the review note	Practice admins, in Clinical Review
Practice Handbook changes	Who changed which item or setting, and when	Practice admins, on the handbook’s Audit tab
Usage	Which staff member viewed which symptom, handbook page or workflow, and when	Practice admins, in Analytics and on the Engagement tabs
Suggestions	The message, the page it was sent from, and who sent it	Your practice admins (suggestions about your cards) or the Signposting Toolkit team (feature requests and bug reports)
AI use	Who used which AI tool, which model, and the estimated cost	The Signposting Toolkit team
Feedback survey answers	Each person’s rating and any comment, with the practice where they answered and their role there. Their name only if they agreed to be contacted. Kept apart: who has been asked, and when, and what they told the card	The Signposting Toolkit team. Practice admins see only a summary of their practice’s ratings, from five ratings, never comments, names or who answered

Usage figures

Analytics and the Engagement tabs are there to show whether the toolkit is being used and where training might help, not to monitor individual performance. They do show named staff, for example Most Active Users and each person’s last activity, so tell your team that usage is recorded. Opening a card from Clinical Review isn’t counted as a view. See Analytics and engagement.

Your own display preferences, such as card style, are saved in your browser rather than your account.

Patient-identifiable data

The toolkit is designed to hold guidance, not patient information. It isn’t connected to your clinical system, and nothing in it asks for patient details.

Some forms remind you of this directly: messages to the Signposting Toolkit team, feedback surveys, feedback on AI sample cards, and material you paste into the handbook starter. Apply the same rule everywhere, including card wording, handbook pages, appointment notes and suggestions to your own admins. Text in cards, handbook pages and some forms can be sent to the AI service; see Using AI safely.

If patient details are entered by mistake, remove them and tell the Signposting Toolkit team, so earlier copies (for example in a card’s history) can be dealt with.

Where to raise concerns

A security or data protection concern, or a request about the data held about you: email contact@signpostingtool.co.uk.
An account you think is being misused: reset its password (or ask us to), which signs it out everywhere, and remove it from your practice if it shouldn’t have access. Then tell us.
A clinical safety concern about a card: see Clinical governance.

Using AI safely Roles and permissions