Response Approval Workflow

MQUAD provides a configurable approval workflow that lets designated reviewers examine responses before they are included in the final dataset.

Enabling Approval Workflow

1. Navigate to your survey's Settings tab.
2. Under Response Processing, toggle Enable Approval Workflow.
3. Configure the approval settings:
   • Require Approval — All responses require approval before inclusion
   • Auto-Approve Known Respondents — Skip approval for pre-approved email domains
   • Number of Approvals Required — Set 1 or 2 (two-person approval)
   • Approval Deadline — Auto-approve if not reviewed within N days

Once enabled, all new responses enter a Pending state until reviewed.

Reviewing Responses

Approvers can access pending responses from:

• Dashboard — The pending count is shown in the overview widget
• Survey > Responses — Filter by status: Pending, Approved, Rejected
• Notifications — Email and in-app alerts when new responses need review

Click on any pending response to view the full submission. The review screen shows:

• The complete response data formatted as the respondent saw it
• Respondent metadata (submission time, IP address, device, duration)
• Previous version (if the response was edited before approval)
• Notes from previous reviewers

Approve / Reject Actions

Each reviewer can take one of three actions:

• Approve — The response is marked as approved and included in exports and analytics.
• Reject — The response is rejected. Provide a reason in the comment field. Rejected responses can be returned to the respondent for resubmission or permanently excluded.
• Request Revision — Send the response back to the collector with reviewer comments for correction.

Click Submit Review to finalize your action. If two-person approval is required, the response status changes to Partially Approved until a second reviewer acts.

Bulk Approval

When you have many responses to process, use bulk actions:

1. From the Responses tab, filter by Pending status.
2. Select responses using the checkboxes (or Select All).
3. Click Bulk Approve or Bulk Reject.
4. Optionally add a bulk comment that applies to all selected responses.
5. Confirm the action.

Bulk approvals respect the two-person approval requirement — if enabled, a single bulk action only provides the first approval.

Audit Trail for Approvals

Every approval action is logged in the audit trail with:

• Timestamp — When the action was taken
• Reviewer — Who performed the action
• Action — Approved, rejected, or revision requested
• Comment — The reviewer's feedback
• Previous Status — The response's status before the action

To view the audit trail for a specific response, open the response and click Approval History. The full timeline of all actions is displayed in chronological order.

Notifications

Configure who receives notifications for approval events under Settings > Notifications:

• New response pending approval (sent to all approvers)
• Response approved (sent to the collector)
• Response rejected (sent to the collector with rejection reason)
• Approval deadline approaching (sent to pending reviewers)