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 address more than one organisation, e.g., the client, their lawyers and their corporate advisors

For the purposes of Q&A, a bidder or seller group will be treated as one entity and provides all members of the group with visibility to the questions that are asked and the responses sent.

• 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.

Unique IDs allow each group to have an anonymous name (like "Group Yellow"), but to allow the Site Administrator to correctly identify each group.

• Questions for each bidder group will be numbered, starting at "1"

This article assumes the reader is familiar with the basic Q&A features.

To enable Advanced Q&A features, a Site Administrator can enable Advanced Q&A permission in Security Settings.

Creating Q&A groups

Identify bidders

To add any user to an advanced bidder group, the user must first be identified as a bidder.

First, navigate to Admin > User management > Users:

Select the Bidder checkbox for each user, and deselect the checkbox for any non-bidder or seller.

You can mark users as bidders/non-bidders even if they are in the same organisation.

Click Continue to confirm any change.

Any user that is not selected is assumed to represent a non-bidder or seller.

A user set as a bidder cannot see other bidder users or activity, and cannot access admin settings. However, a bidder can see members of the same bidder organisation.

Types of advanced bidder groups

Advanced Q&A settings allow two types of groups: bidder groups and seller groups.  

Once the Advanced Q&A setting has been enabled, a new section will be displayed under the Q&A admin section: Q&A groups. 

Click 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 set as bidders.

Click 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, set a limit on the number of questions this group can ask. The default value of -1 means there is no limit.
• Select which bidders should be added to the bidder group.
• Click Save

Your new bidder group will be created and listed on 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 users that are not bidders.

Click Create seller group to display the Create seller group screen:

Enter a group name, select the Sellers and click Save to save the new group. The seller group typically includes clients of the company (law firm, investment bank, etc.) that owns the instance of Collaborate.

Updating Q&A groups

Bidder groups and seller groups can be updated at any time from the Q&A groups page.

New organisations can be added to a group, existing organisations removed or an entire bidder organisation can be deleted by selecting the radio button next to a group name and clicking Remove Q&A group:

A confirmation message will be displayed:

Click 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 that have been 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 will receive all questions that have been approved and submitted by all users in the same bidder group. In turn, the bidder admin must further approve the question before it will be forwarded to the seller group for a response. The purpose of this role is to collect all questions that come 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 will see the following message: "Your question has been sent successfully for final approval." The question will have a status of Pending approval and awaits final approval from the Bidder admin. If the Bidder admin is set up with Q&A email permissions, then they will receive an email notification. Once a Bidder admin approves a question, the question will be forwarded to the seller group and given a status of Question pending response.

More than one user can be a bidder admin; they all have the same permissions to approve any question from the bidder group.

No user is required to be assigned the role of Bidder admin. If the role is not assigned, then questions that have been approved by a user with Submit-Question permissions will be forwarded directly to the seller group. In that case, when the question is approved, the user who approved the question will see this message: "Your question has been approved successfully and a response will be posted to the Q&A Forum shortly." The question will have a status of 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 will not know who sent the questions.) The bidder admin also will receive an email notification when an unapproved question is asked.

Users in a bidder group will be able to see the questions asked by any other user in the bidder group, regardless of whether they are in the same organisation. This applies to draft questions and all other questions.

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 who is made a topic expert will receive all questions in the topic(s) for which they have been anointed an expert. The Topic Expert can then answer these questions, which will be sent directly to the bidder group without the need for 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 make the user the topic expert for more than one topic. A Topic Expert can also change an improperly categorised question's topic so that it can be approved by the correct expert
• Seller Admin - This will enable a user to receive all responses that have been 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, then their approval will be required for any response before it is sent to the relevant bidder group. The purpose of this permission is to collate all responses from all users within the Seller group and centralise the approval. If more than one user is designated a Seller admin, then any of those users can approve a response
• Approve Replies - This will allow a user to approve any replies created by a user with Reply-to-Questions permissions, although if another user has been made a Seller admin, the Seller admin will need to further approve any replies
• Reply to Questions (the same permissions as in the regular Q&A module) - This will allow a user to view and reply to any questions that have been asked by any bidder groups. The response will be sent directly to the relevant bidder group

View All Questions (the same permissions as in the regular Q&A module) -- This will allow a user to see all questions that have been submitted by any bidder group. The user will also see any responses.

Reports

In the Advanced Q&A module, there are two additional reports, compared with the regular Q&A module:

• A Q&A Summary report, which 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