Site management

Advanced Q&A features

Advanced Q&A settings extend the functions of the standard Q&A module and allow for more sophisticated permissions and workflow. The additional features include:
  • The ability to create bidder groups that address more than one organisation, e.g., a bidder firm, their lawyers and their corporate advisors
  • The ability to create a seller group that addresses more than one organisation, e.g., the client, their lawyers and their corporate advisors
  • The ability to allocate topic experts - all questions tagged with a specific topic can be directly allocated to the topic expert
  • A more complex workflow with the option to require additional levels of approval
  • The ability to limit the numbering of questions each bidder group can ask
  • The ability to give each bidder group a unique ID, which puts a prefix in front of the group's name
  • Questions for each bidder group will be numbered, starting at '1'.
This article assumes the reader is familiar with the basic Q&A features.

Creating Q&A groups

Identify bidder organisations
To add an organisation to an advanced bidder group, that organisation must first be identified as a bidder organisation.
First, navigate to
Admin
 >
User management
 >
Bidder organisations
.
Mark the
Bidder
 checkbox to add bidder access to an organisation. Select
Save
 to save your changes.
Types of advanced bidder groups
Advanced Q&A settings allow two types of groups. bidder groups and seller groups.
If the
Advanced Q&A setting
 has been enabled, the
Q&A groups
 section is displayed in the
Q&A
 admin section.
Select
Q&A groups
 to display the Q&A groups page.
At the top of this page, three buttons will be visible.
  • Create bidder group
  • Create seller group
  • Remove Q&A group.
Creating a bidder group
You can create any number of bidder groups. A bidder group may contain users from one or more bidder organisations, however, each user can only be a member of a single bidder group.
Select
Create bidder group
 to display the
Create bidder group
 screen.
  • Give the new bidder group a unique name
  • Optionally, add a Group ID which will be added to the beginning of the question numbers
  • Optionally, limit the number of questions this group can ask. The default value of -1 means there is no limit.
  • Indicate which bidder organisations should be added to the bidder group. Any organisations that have already been added to a bidder or seller group will not be listed
  • Select
    Save
Your new bidder group will be created and listed in the
Q&A groups
 page.
Creating a seller group
Creating a seller group is identical to creating a bidder group, but with two differences.
  • There can be only a single seller group
    • Once the seller group is created, the
      Create seller group
       button will no longer be displayed.
  • A
    seller
     group can only be composed of organisations that are
    not
     bidder organisations. In the image below, only the ABC and HighQ organisations, which are not bidder organisations, are available for the seller group.
Select
Create seller group
 to display the
Create seller group
 screen.
Enter a group name, select the Organisation and select
Save
 to save the new group. The seller group typically includes the client of the company (law firm, investment bank, etc.) that owns the instance of Collaborate.
Updating Q&A groups
New organisations can be added to a group, existing organisations removed or an entire bidder organisation can be deleted; select the radio button next to a group name and click
Remove Q&A group
.
A confirmation message opens.
Select
Delete
 to confirm the delete action.
Set Q&A permissions
Once the seller and bidders groups have been created, set the relevant permissions for each user in the organisations added to a Q&A group from the Q&A permissions page.
Bidder permissions
Users who are members of a bidder group may only have these permissions.
  • Ask Questions
     (the same permissions as in the regular Q&A module) - A user with this role can ask questions but cannot submit them to be answered.
  • Submit Questions
     (the same permissions as in the regular Q&A module) - A user with this role can submit a question asked by a member of the same bidder group, although if another user has been made a Bidder Admin, then that user must approve any questions first.
  • Bidder Admin
     - A user with this role receives all questions approved and submitted by users in the same bidder group.
    In turn, the bidder admin must approve the question before it is forwarded to the seller group for a response. The purpose of this role is to collect all questions from any organisation in the bidder group and centralise management and approval of those questions.
    If a user with Submit-Question permissions approves a question, they see the following message: 'Your question has been sent successfully for final approval.' The question status is changed to
    Pending approval
     and awaits final approval from the Bidder admin.
    If the Bidder admin is set up with Q&A email permissions, they receive an email notification. When a Bidder admin approves a question, the question is forwarded to the seller group and given a status of
    Question pending response
    .
    You do not have to assign the role of Bidder admin. If the role is not assigned, then questions approved by a user with Submit-Question permissions are forwarded directly to the seller group. In that case, when the question is approved, the user who approved the question sees this message. 'Your question has been approved successfully and a response will be posted to the Q&A Forum shortly.' The question status is changed to
    Pending
    .
    A bidder admin can also see unapproved questions that have been asked by users with Ask-Question permissions only and can approve the question(s), whether there is a user in the same organisation as the person who asked the questions with Submit-Question permissions or not. (The bidder admin does not know who sent the questions.) The bidder admin also receives an email notification when an unapproved question is asked.
Seller permissions
Users who are part of a seller group may be given every permission, except Bidder admin permissions.
  • Ask Questions
     - see above.
  • Submit Questions
     - see above.
  • Topic Expert
     - Any user set as a topic expert receives all questions for topics where they are designated as an expert. The Topic Expert can then answer these questions and send answers directly to the bidder group without further approval.
    Next to each member of the Seller Group is a
    Select
     button under the
    Topic expert
     column, click this to make that user the topic expert. From this screen, you can select one or more topics.
    A Topic Expert can also change an improperly categorised question's topic for approval by the correct expert.
  • Seller Admin
     - This enables a user to receive all responses sent by users with Reply-to-Question permission. No user is required to have this role, but if a user is appointed a Seller admin, their approval is required for any response before it is sent to the relevant bidder group.
    This permission collates all responses from all users in the Seller group and centralises approval. If more than one user is designated a Seller admin, then any of those users can approve a response.
  • Approve Replies
     - This allows a user to approve replies created by a user with Reply-to-Questions permissions, although if another user has been made a Seller admin, the Seller admin must also approve replies.
  • Reply to Questions
     (the same permissions as in the regular Q&A module) - This allows a user to view and reply to any questions asked by any bidder groups. The response is sent directly to the relevant bidder group.
  • View All Questions
     (the same permissions as in the regular Q&A module) -- This allows a user to see all questions submitted by any bidder group. The user also sees any responses.
Reports
In the
Advanced Q&A
 module, two additional reports are available compared to the regular Q&A module.
  • A
    Q&A Summary report
     shows the latest questions per bidder, the latest answers given, answers open, or still pending approvals. The Q&A summary report can be exported to an Excel sheet to provide a complete overview of the current status of the QA process.
    When a bidder group has reached its question limit, the number of questions asked appears in red.
  • A
    Questions by Group
     report filters answers and approvals by group.

This article applies to:

  • Product: HighQ
  • Subject: Setup