Policy Management

Project: Reimagining Policy Management for a Seamless Admin Experience

At DNSFilter, our commitment to providing a powerful yet intuitive cybersecurity solution extends to every facet of our platform. This project focused on a critical "red route" for our users: the Policy Management experience. Our goal was to not only align this core feature with our evolving design system and brand guidelines but also to address key pain points highlighted in customer feedback, ultimately creating a smoother and more efficient administrative workflow.

The Challenge: Power and Simplicity in Harmony

Our customers, ranging from small businesses to large MSPs, needed a robust policy engine to enforce security and content filtering rules across their networks. While our existing system was powerful, we identified several areas for improvement based on user feedback and analytics:

• Complex Workflows: The process of creating, applying, and managing policies could be cumbersome, especially for new users.

• Inconsistent UI: As our product grew, some UI elements in the policy section had become inconsistent with our broader design language.

• Scalability Concerns: For our partners managing hundreds or even thousands of clients, the existing interface presented scalability challenges.

Our Approach: User-Obsessed Design

Our design process was rooted in a deep understanding of our users' needs and workflows. We conducted user interviews, analyzed support tickets, and held workshops with our customer-facing teams to gather insights. This user-centric approach led to a complete overhaul of the Policy Management experience, focusing on three key pillars:

1. Intuitive Interface: We redesigned the entire user interface to be cleaner, more intuitive, and fully aligned with our design system. The new layout guides administrators through the policy creation process with clear, concise language and visual cues.

2. Streamlined Workflows: We re-architected the information flow to simplify common tasks.

3. Granular Control, Simplified: We enhanced the granularity of our policy engine without adding complexity to the UI. Administrators can now easily:

   • Block or allow entire categories of websites with a single click.

   • Create custom block and allow lists with thousands of domains.

   • Schedule policies to activate at specific times of the day or week.

   • Customize block pages with their own branding and messaging.

   • Apply policies with precision to individual users, groups, or entire sites.

The Result: Empowering Admins, Securing Networks

The new Policy Management experience has been a resounding success. We've received overwhelmingly positive feedback from our early adopters, who praise the design. Key outcomes include:

• Reduced Time-on-Task: Administrators can now create and manage policies in a fraction of the time, freeing them up to focus on other critical tasks.

• Increased Adoption: The simplified interface has led to increased adoption of our more advanced policy features.

• Fewer Errors: Switching to a manual save flow has improved control and reduced side effects.

This project is a testament to our commitment to user-centric design and our passion for creating a security product that is both powerful and a pleasure to use. We are proud of the result and are confident that the new Policy Management experience will continue to empower our customers to secure their networks with ease and confidence. It also sets the stage for future enhancements related to layered policies.