đ§Ș This feature will exit open beta on February 21st, 2024.
For our team to continue working on it, we will disable it in your organization on February 21st, 2024, until the next release. Please take a moment to review any pending approval survey responses before then. Any unapproved changes will be lost.
In the next release we will enable survey creators to approve changes made to components, references, and tags, including the creation and deletion of components and references, in a centralized manner.
We are still open for your feedback.
Survey Response Approvals is a new feature available in Surveys that enables admins to decide whether they want to isolate changes made through a specific survey, ensuring that these changes only reflect in the graph after receiving approval from the administrator.
Overview
Why to Isolate Changes?
Enterprise architects, particularly in large enterprises, must adhere to stringent data governance policies. By equipping them with the capability to isolate changes made by stakeholders from the wider organization until data owners can decide which changes should be applied to live EA data ensures the maintenance of the quality of enterprise architecture. This, in turn, fosters trust in data within the organization.
How to Enable Response Approval for a Survey?
Here's a step-by-step process you need to follow to enable response approval for a survey:
Enable Response Approvals:
While creating a new survey or editing an existing one, switch on the response approval toggle in the details section of the survey.
Limitations:
Currently, we only support the approval of changes made to survey field questions. Therefore, approving or rejecting responses to other types of questions, as well as component creation and deletion, is not possible at this time.
To enable this feature, your survey must consist exclusively of Field-type questions and have no conditional questions.
The 'Allow respondents to create components' feature, enabled by default, should be disabled. Otherwise, the Change approval toggle switch will be disabled (grey).
2. Save and Set Survey Live:
Save the changes made to the survey and set it to live status.
3. Initiate Responses Collection:
Whether using Broadcast or any other channel to request changes, launch the responses collection process and await the initial feedback.
In the future, admins will receive immediate notifications as soon as survey responses are submitted. Vote for this or any other feature in question 3.
4. Navigate to Survey Overview:
Visit the survey overview page to access pending changes.
5. Access Pending Responses:
Click on "Change approval" tab to view the list of pending survey responses.
Alternatively, use the three dots menu on the survey to navigate to the survey approval page.
On the approval page, you'll find a chronological list of changes, prioritizing the earliest modifications at the top. This ensures that items requiring attention first are processed promptly in the queue.
6. Approve or Reject Changes:
Review and either approve or reject the changes. The survey change requests are grouped by component.
Limitation
There is no partial review process: while you have the option to approve changes to only a selected number of components and save your progress to apply those changes, it's not possible to selectively "Save and Apply" changes to only a few fields within a specific component. All changes to the fields of a component must be reviewed and saved together.
7. Finalize and Save:
After reviewing all responses, make a decision on each component and save your changes.
Be cautious, as attempting to save changes without reviewing all fields of a component will discard your work.
Spotting Components With Pending Approvals as an Ardoq Survey Respondent
Standalone Survey Page:
When using the standalone survey interface (survey module not integrated into Ardoq Discover), survey respondents will notice a "Pending changes" tag next to the component name, both on the survey page and the component page when submitting the survey:
And then "Pending approval" tag on the page of component when submitting the survey.
It's important to note that the tags will only be displayed if changes have been previously applied to the component fields and havenât been reviewed as part of the specific survey. If a user reviews the same component as part of a different survey, the "Pending approval" tag will not be visible. For example, if a user changes the price of Application X through the Application Details survey, another user viewing Application X through the same survey will see the "Pending approval" tag and the latest cost changed by the first user. However, if the user reviews Application X through the Application Cost and Allocation survey, they will see the old price of the application, and no "Pending approval" tag will be added.
Limitation:
Currently, survey contributors cannot view information about who made the latest changes, when the changes were made, or the original value of the field.
Surveys in Ardoq Discover:
If a survey is sent via broadcast to a targeted audience, individuals from this audience will find a list of components with pending changes in the "Pending Approval" section of the My Tasks page:
Additionally, users can see that certain component changes are pending approval by opening the component page through a survey connected to the viewpoint:
Tracking responses & Approvals
Tracking responses as an administrator-approver.
One of the existing limitations is that the administrator's name will be shown in the survey response log instead of the name of the person who proposed those changes.
An administrator will not see the survey submissions in the broadcast progress bar until such a response is approved.
Tracking approvals as a contributor-respondent.
At this moment, survey respondents are not notified whenever the survey response they submitted has been approved or rejected. We're evaluating the need for this.
However, contributors will be able to differentiate between questions with pending approvals and those that no longer have pending approvals: Once the survey is submitted, the component will be marked as "Pending Approvals," even though it will be placed in the "Complete" folder on the My Task page in Ardoq Discover. Once the survey changes are approved, the tag will disappear.
Frequently Asked Questions
What Changes Can Be Isolated?
This feature isolates any updates made to components by a contributor when responding to field questions in surveys.
Limitations:
To enable this feature, your survey must consist exclusively of Field-type questions and have no conditional questions.
The 'Allow respondents to create components' feature, enabled by default, should be disabled. Otherwise, the Change approval toggle switch will be disabled (grey).
The changes to the references, tags, or nested conditional questions cannot be isolated at this moment. This means that an administrator will not be able to control these changes even if the Change Approval toggle is enabled for a survey. Such changes automatically appear in the graph.
Additionally, the feature does not display created or deleted components at the moment.
Please tell us how important any of these features are for you in this survey.
Who Can Approve Survey Responses?
Only users with the administrator role have the authority to approve changes. However, users with other roles can enable or disable change approvals for a survey if they have survey privileges. While they can see the âPending Approvalsâ tab on the survey overview page, access to this section is restricted.
Do you think this authority should be delegated to different roles? Please share your feedback with us.
What Happens if Multiple Users Make Changes to the Same Field in the Same Survey?
While changes made by multiple users to the same field in the same survey won't be reflected in the graph until approved by the admin, the survey respondents will see the latest changes made by them or other users to the field on the page of the component.
The admin, a person responsible for approving the change, will only see the latest version of the changes too.
For example, if user A makes changes to a survey field that requires approval, and later, before an admin reviewed the changes, user B opens the component, they will see the changes made by user A. After user B changes the field value, the previous value will be overwritten in the survey interface and the new value will appear for both users. However, neither of these changes will will be applied to the live data until the admin approves the latest one: When the administrator reviews change approvals for this component, theyâll see only changes done by user B. The changes done by user A will be visible in the Survey Response Log.
What's Next?
Here are the next steps we're considering to evolve this feature:
Incorporate created and deleted components.
Include changes made with reference questions.
Introduce in-app notifications to inform users.
Please test this feature share your feedback with us in this survey.