Ack’Man — track who was notified, who viewed, and who acknowledged.
Open‑source and completely free. No heavy dependencies. Perfect for small businesses that need lightweight compliance workflows without adopting full HR suites.
- Open source (GPL v3). Free for personal and commercial use.
- Single compiled binary. No external dependencies.
- Works on Windows, macOS, Linux (amd64/arm64).
- SQLite database + local data directory for docs & settings.
- Notify via email, Rocket.Chat, or Slack.
- Track notifications, access events, and acknowledgements.
- Send reminders to non‑acknowledged users.
What is Ack’Man?
Ack’Man is a simple document acknowledgement system meant for small businesses that lack the centralized staff and user infrastructures necessary for most HR tracking solutions. With Ack’Man you have a central location to store your HR and other critical documents, store a list of your employees, assign documents to selected or all team members, notify them, provide the documents and track when employees have been notified, if they have accessed the documents, and if they have acknowledged reading the documents. This is a simple compliance workflow designed to bridge the gap between being stuck with pen and paper, and implementing heavy, complex HR solutions.
Open Source & Free
Ack’Man is open source and completely free for both person and commercial use. Simply download and use. It is compiled and has no system dependencies. It works fine from a big Linux server or a small Windows desktop and of course we love to see it on Raspberry Pi. You just connect it to your email, rocketchat or slack and it communicates with your employees directly.
Technical Details
Technical Details: Ack’Man is written in Go and Fiber with all dependencies compiled in. You can run manually or run as a service. All data, both the database and documents, are stored in a data directory. The database is SQLite which required no management. Everything is handled for you.
Workflow
WorkFlow: As an administrator, you start by creating a quick and easy list of your employees (or group members, whatever you want to track.) Assign each a communications method like email or RocketChat. Then upload one or more documents and assign the correct employees to those documents. Documents are stored in the system making it a simple repository for critical items like legal disclaimers and HR policy documents and that ever present employee handbook! Or you can use external URLs and point to resources like websites, hosted PDF files or YouTube videos. When an employee gets the link, you'll know. When they follow the link, you'll know. And if they acknowledge the content, you'll know. Everything is stored and tracked for you. You can even use the system to send out reminders to those that have not yet acknowledged a document.