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Scout makes it easy to assign questions to Stakeholders, and to moderate their answers. Here, we break down:
- Enabling Stakeholders to answer questions
- Assigning a question to a Stakeholder
- How a Stakeholder answers a question
- Questions assigned to different Stakeholders
Enable Stakeholders to Answer Questions
First, you'll want to make sure you've added your teammate(s) as Stakeholders. To do this, open your Event and scroll down to the "Invited Stakeholders" section:
Here, you can add Stakeholders (just add their name and email address) and/or edit Stakeholders' permissions.
Q&A Permissions
There are three different types of Stakeholder permissions, each allowing (or restricting) different access to answering questions:
- Read Only - No access, not able to answer questions
- Answer Q&A - Restricted access, can answer questions BUT answers must be approved by RFP Owner
- Read/Write - Full access, can answer questions independently
Note: If you want to be able to moderate a Stakeholder's answers, assign them "Answer Q&A" permissions.
Assign Questions to Stakeholders
Go to the Event Dashboard and open the Message Center:
If there is a question to answer, select a Stakeholder from the "Assign to:" dropdown:
How a Stakeholder Answers
If you've assigned a question to a Stakeholder, they will see the Message Center when they open the Event's Dashboard in Scout, and their ability to answer that question will be based upon their permissions:
Answer Q&A Permissions
If they have Answer Q&A permissions, they can answer the question and submit it to the RFP Owner for approval:
Read/Write Permissions
If they have Read/Write permissions, they can answer the question, then select either to answer the Supplier directly OR share the Q&A with all Suppliers:
Note: If you share with all Suppliers, the Supplier who asked the question is made anonymous to the group.
Questions Assigned to Different Stakeholders
What if different questions have been assigned to different Stakeholders?
In that case, each Stakeholder (with Q&A or Read/Write permissions) can still see all the questions that have been asked, but the questions will be broken up by section:
You'll see a "Questions Assigned to Me" section at the top, followed by an "Unanswered Questions" section where questions assigned to other Stakeholders will be.
Note: One question can only be assigned to one Stakeholder, but each separate question can be assigned to a different one of the stakeholders.
If you are the RFP Owner or have Read/Write permissions, then you may see an "Approvable Questions" section, as well:
This section will show questions submitted by Stakeholders with Answer Q&A permissions whose answers need approval.
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