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Project Approval

What's on This Page:

About Project Approval

The project approval process allows administrators to set up rules for when surveys require approval before they are published. This lets administrators review their license’s usage and review what information their company is gathering.

With this tool, administrators can specify which users need approval before publishing surveys. They can also designate which users or groups are allowed to approve surveys for specific groups of users, allowing large organizations to set up fine-grained approval processes to make sure the right approvers are reviewing the right surveys.

Creating A Default Approval Rule

When creating a survey approval workflow, it’s important to configure your default rule. This rule will always take effect if none of your custom approval rules are met.

Qtip: Only brand administrators can create survey approval rules.

Navigate to the Admin section.
Click the Approvals tab.
Go to Rules.
Click Change next to the default rule.
Choose your default rule. Your options include:
- Never: Surveys do not require approval by default.
- First time published: Surveys require approval the first time they are published. After being approved, survey owners can modify and republish the survey without approval.
- Always (every time published or updated): Surveys require approval every time they are published. This includes edits made to a live survey that are published.
If you selected First time published or Always as your default rule, you’ll also need to select which user group is responsible for approving surveys.
Click Apply to save your rule.

Creating Custom Approval Rules

You can create additional approval rules depending on who the survey owner is. This allows you to create a network of survey approvers and approvees based on your company structure.

Qtip: Only Brand Administrators can create survey approval rules.

Navigate to the Admin section.
Click the Approvals tab.
Go to Rules.
Click Add Rule.
Give your rule a description.
Choose the Survey owner group. This is the user group that will need to have their surveys approved.
Choose when surveys need to be approved. Your options include:
- Never: Surveys do not require approval by default.
- First time published: Surveys require approval the first time they are published. After being approved, survey owners can modify and republish the survey without approval.
- Always (every time published or updated): Surveys require approval every time they are published. This includes edits made to a live survey that are published.
Select the Approver group. This is the user group that will approve surveys for the selected survey owner group.
Determine if this rule is active or inactive by selecting or deselecting the Enabled box.
Click Add Rule to create additional rules and repeat the above steps. You may create up to 25 rules.
Once you’ve finished creating your rules, make sure to Apply them!

Deleting Rules

Custom Rules

You can delete custom rules by expanding the rule and clicking Delete within the rule.

The Default Rule

You cannot delete the default rule. However, you can change it so that surveys never need approval.

Reverting Changes

If you’ve made changes to your survey approval rules that you’d like to discard, you can click Revert to reverse these changes. This will revert your rules to how they were the last time you clicked Apply.

Attention: Any edits that are discarded by clicking Revert are irretrievable!

How Rules Are Evaluated

Whenever a survey owner publishes a survey, the survey approval rules are checked. The rules are evaluated in order according to their rule number. A rule’s number can be found directly to the left of the rule’s description.

You can reorder your custom rules by clicking and dragging the six dots on the rule.

Once a rule is evaluated and is true, then the survey will follow that approval rule. If none of the custom rules are true for this survey, then the default rule will take effect.

The Approval Process

This section will walk through the full approval process.

A survey owner attempts to publish their survey and is presented with a pop-up that they need approval.
The survey owner chooses which user will approve the survey.
Qtip: While it’s possible for a brand administrator to set approver groups when creating an approval rule, when an individual goes to publish the survey, they must select an individual approver for their survey.
If desired, the survey owner can also leave notes for the approver.
The survey owner clicks Request Approval.
The approver receives an email, mobile, or in-product notifying them they have a survey to approve.

Qtip: The survey is automatically collaborated with the approver. The survey will not show up in the approver’s project list, but the approver name will appear in the collaboration window for the survey.

Qtip: Check out the notifications feed to determine the channel of notification you receive, such as email, mobile, or in-product. Make sure you are not unsubscribed from all notifications or from “Approvals.”
The approver logs into their Qualtrics account.
At the top of the approver’s projects page, they’ll see the survey that needs approval.
The approver clicks Review to review the project.
Qtip: Click the three dots and then Review in editor to review the survey in the survey editing window instead of reviewing the preview version of the survey. This option is helpful if you want to view aspects of the survey not readily apparent when previewing it, such as checking display logic or the survey flow.
The approver is presented the preview version of the survey for them to review.
The approver can choose to either Deny or Approve the survey.
Qtip: If the approver denies the survey, they’re given the option to provide feedback to the survey owner for any suggested changes.

Qtip: After approving or denying the survey, the survey is automatically unshared with the approver since they no longer need to review it.