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Allow or Block a Category

Important Notes:

Regarding Default Category Allow/Block setting changes:

The DrawBridge comes with a preset Action for each included Category.

Therefore, when you assign an Action (Allow/Block) to a Category, you're simply applying a change that gets higher priority than the default setting.

This means:
1. You don't need to re-specify your Action preference for every built-in Category -- you only need to include the Categories in your Access Policy that you wish to assign a different action to than is default.

For example: built-in Category Sports is set to a default action of Block. If Block is the action you prefer, you do not need to add it to an Access Policy (eg. Company Preferences) with an action of Block -- the default setting is already doing this.
However, if Allow is the action you prefer, then you do need to add it to an Access Policy (eg. Company Preferences) with an action of Allow to override the default action.

2. In the event a custom Access Policy is removed, the filter will revert to the default Action for that Category.

Regarding the default Category action settings:

Default Category settings are Business-focused.

The default settings for the Built-in Categories are tightly scoped to business-usage needs. Depending on your usage expectations, you will want to set more categories to Allow in your Company Preferences Access Policy, or in a custom Access Policy.

Allow a Category

  1. In the DrawBridge Console, click Accounts on the left sidebar, then click Companies
  2. In your Company record, click Access Policy Dashboard
  3. At the top of your Dashboard are quick action buttons for Allow and Block. Click the Category button on Allow
  4. In the popup window, select the category you wish to Allow from the dropdown list, and then click Save.
  5. Press CTRL + F5 on your keyboard, and then, if present, click Reload Redwood, and then Yes to apply your changes.
  6. After the notification bar indicates that the reload is complete, navigate back to where you were encountering the blockpage, and reload that page (CTRL+F5).

This procedure places the category selected into the Company Preferences Access Policy with an action of Allow assigned to it.

Note: Some Accountability Policies may restrict the ability to Allow a category. In such a case, you will either not be given the option to Allow a category, or you will receive an error message.

Block a Category

  1. In the DrawBridge Console, click Accounts on the right sidebar, then click Companies
  2. In your Company record, click Access Policy Dashboard
  3. At the top of your Dashboard are quick action buttons for Allow and Block. Click the Category button on Block
  4. In the popup window, select the category you wish to Block from the dropdown list, and then click Save.
  5. Press CTRL + F5 on your keyboard, and then, if present, click Reload Redwood, and then Yes to apply your changes.
  6. After the notification bar indicates that the reload is complete, navigate back to where you were encountering the content you were desiring to be blocked, and reload that page (CTRL+F5).

This procedure places the category selected into the Company Preferences Access Policy with an action of Block assigned to it.

What about Ignore?

You may notice that DrawBridge filtering offers three possible Actions for a category: Allow, Block, & Ignore.

For most reliable filtering performance, do not apply the `IGNORE` Action to categories.

Technical Details

The option to Ignore a category is designed for a few specialized applications.

For any given webpage, the filter typically finds points in multiple categories and then classifies that page by the category having the highest points. For example, the three highest-scoring categories for grainger.com may be "Carpentry", "Metals", and "Automotive", in that order.

If a category is Ignored, the filter "ignores" it when it scores highest and classifies the page by the second-highest scoring category. In the example above, if "Carpentry" were Ignored, the grainger.com site would classify as "Metals".

Examples where Ignore can be helpful:

  • For YouTube, Ignoring the YouTube category places more scoring weight on the lower-scoring categories found on a given video, which can improve classification of videos.
  • An automotive shop might Ignore the "Racing" cateogory to avoid parts pages from blocking as "Racing".
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