Privacy Rules
Org-wide rules that automatically mark sensitive documents as private — enforced at the platform level, with no ability for employees to override them.
What Are Privacy Rules?
Privacy Rules let administrators define automated logic that evaluates every document against its source, content, and metadata. When a rule's conditions are met, the document is silently marked private and excluded from all search results and Digital Twin responses across the organization.
Rules are written using Jinja template syntax and can match on virtually any signal:
- Source type — e.g., only evaluate email documents, or only Slack messages
- Content keywords — regex patterns matched against the document body
- Metadata fields — sender address, subject line, channel name, document path
- Nested data — any field accessible via the document's parsed JSON structure
Some rules are provided by Viven out of the box. Admins can also create custom rules tailored to their organization's specific sensitivity requirements.
How Enforcement Works
Privacy Rules take effect immediately for new queries — no reprocessing cycle required. Once a rule is active, matching documents are withheld from results in real time.
A few important properties of how rules are enforced:
- Employees cannot override or disable rules. This is by design — Privacy Rules are a hard control, not a preference.
- Employees have no visibility into why a document was withheld. They will simply not see it in search or Twin responses.
- Rules are evaluated per query, so changes (adding, editing, or deleting a rule) take effect for the next query without any manual sync.
Deleting or modifying a rule may reclassify documents that were previously blocked. Review carefully before making changes to active rules.
When to Use Privacy Rules
Privacy Rules are the right tool when content must be reliably excluded regardless of who is asking — not just hidden by default. Common use cases:
| Scenario | Example rule |
|---|---|
| Confidential HR records | Block all documents from an HR file storage path |
| Legal holds | Block documents matching specific case keywords |
| Executive communications | Block emails from or to a specific domain or address list |
| Compliance requirements | Block documents containing regulated data patterns (e.g., SSNs, contract terms) |
To learn how to view, create, and manage Privacy Rules in the Admin Console, see Privacy Rules configuration →