Overview
A follow-up lets you go back to a responder with a question after they have shared their responses, without raising a new request or moving the discussion to email. Everything you ask and everything the responder replies stays inside the project, so the full trail sits next to the response it relates to.
Follow-ups are typically used to:
- Ask the responder to explain or expand on something they have submitted
- Request supporting detail before you approve or sign off on a project
- Give the responder a chance to correct or update a specific answer
- Keep the discussion on record in one place for later review
Two Ways to Follow Up
DiligenceVault offers two levels of follow-up. The one you choose depends on how specific your question is.
- Project level: a single message about the questionnaire as a whole. Useful for general queries or anything that does not belong to one particular question.
- Question level: a message attached to one question. Useful when you need clarity on a specific answer, because the responder sees your question right next to their own response.
Sending a Project Level Follow-Up
Navigation path
From the left navigation panel, go to Diligence > Projects, open the project you want, then select the Summary tab.
Steps
- Scroll to the Conversations between You and Responder section.
- Type your question in the text box.
- Click Follow up with Responder to send it.
- Your message appears in the conversation thread with the date it was sent, and replies from the responder appear in the same thread.
The Summary tab holds the project level conversation with the responder.
Sending a Question Level Follow-Up
Once the responder has submitted the project, you can raise a follow-up against any individual question.
Navigation path
From the left navigation panel, go to Diligence > Projects > In-Progress, select the project row, then open the Questionnaire tab.
Steps
- Click the follow-up icon on the right of the question. The follow-up panel opens on the right of the screen.
- Type your message in the text box. To mention and notify a team member, type @ and select their name.
- Decide whether the responder should be able to edit the answer, as explained below.
- Click Send to deliver the follow-up now, or Queue & Send Later to hold it.
The follow-up icon sits with the other question actions on the right of each question.
Choosing how the responder can reply
When you open a follow-up you have two options, and the difference matters.
- Leave Allow Response Revisions unticked to keep the follow-up as a conversation. The responder can discuss and clarify the question with you, but cannot edit the response they submitted.
- Tick Allow Response Revisions when you want the responder to correct or update the answer itself.
The follow-up panel, showing the reply box and the Allow Response Revisions.
Sending now or queuing for later
- Send delivers the follow-up to the responder straight away (within 15 mins).
- Queue & Send Later holds the follow-up so nothing reaches the responder until you are ready. This helps when you are working through a long questionnaire and would rather send all your questions together.
- A queued follow-up carries an IN QUEUE label in the panel until it is sent.
- The Queued Follow-ups icon in the questionnaire header shows how many messages are waiting. Click it to review the queue.
The Queued Follow-ups icon shows the number of messages still waiting to be sent.
Resolving a Follow-Up
Once the responder has answered and you are satisfied with the outcome, close the follow-up so it no longer counts as open.
- Open the follow-up panel for the question.
- To close a single follow-up, use the options menu next to that message.
- To close every follow-up on the question at once, click Resolve and Close at the top of the panel.
Resolve and Close clears the follow-ups on a question once the discussion is complete.
Finding and Tracking Follow-Ups
- On the Questionnaire tab, use the Follow-ups filter at the top of the page to show only the questions that have follow-ups. The number in the filter tells you how many there are.
- The follow-up icon on each question carries its own count, so you can see how many messages a question already has.
- The project Summary tab shows an Open Follow-Ups count for the project as a whole.
Follow-Up Status
Find all your projects with followups in the main project page and easily filter the projects