Approver role
Use the approver role feature for additional control over which Digital users can publish draft surveys. The approver role is an additional but complementary feature to survey drafts. It is not possible to use the approver role without the survey drafts feature.
Once the approver role feature is enabled, only Digital users with the approver role are able to publish draft surveys. Users without the approver role are no longer able to publish drafts. This adds a governance layer for Medallia customers who need more control over which content is being published to production. Administrators configure who is assigned these roles using the Command Center.
When enabled for a property, different Digital roles have the following capabilities:
- Users with the approver role can publish survey drafts.
- Users without the approver role cannot publish draft surveys. These users are able to draft surveys, but not publish them and are referred to as drafters.
To illustrate with an example, this leads to a workflow where:
- One or more drafters create or edit survey drafts. These users do not have the approver capability, therefore the survey context menu does not show the Publish option.
- A user with the approver role reviews the draft survey, either in the editor or using the preview. When they are happy with the draft, the approver can publish it. Users with the approver role do see the Publish option in the survey's context menu.
- After some time, another user without the approver role notices a way to improve the survey. They create a draft, make their changes and notify the user with the approver role.
- Again the user with the approver role reviews the changes, and possibly objects to a specific change. Instead of publishing the draft they reviewed, this user proposes a different change by sending a modified draft to the group of users without the approver role.
- When the changes are agreed on, the user with the approver role publishes the updated draft.
The result is that users with the approver role are responsible for publishing draft surveys, which they or drafters create and edit. This ensures a level of governance where a user with the approver role must approve changes, usually from a group of users without the approver role.
When the approver role is enabled, you can download a spreadsheet to compare the differences between the draft and published versions of a survey. Use this spreadsheet to get a full insight into what has changed in a draft version before publishing. Other administration teams can use the spreadsheet to create an audit trail for experience program updates to achieve regulatory governance and compliance.
Users and roles
For the approver role to function as expected it is important to understand the different user roles and capabilities because they control who can and cannot approve survey drafts to be published.
Generally most customers use these recommended roles for the approver role feature. Alternatively, configure custom users and assign the appropriate capabilities following the usual Experience Cloud Roles and Permissions process:
To define a user as an approver of draft surveys in Experience Cloud, the user's Primary Role requires the Advanced Digital Survey Management capability.
To define an drafter in Medallia Experience Cloud, the user's Primary Role requires the Digital Survey Management capability.
To use this feature there should be at least one user with the approver capability and one more more users without the approver capability.
Alternatively, it is possible to use the classic user capabilities screen to set the capabilities for a Digital user. An approver requires the Digital CX Group Manager permission and drafters require the Digital CX Manager permission.
Change log
In addition to the GUI based methods of comparing a draft and published version, when the approver role is in use you can export a change log. The change log consists of a spreadsheet which shows the exact differences between a draft and published version. The spreadsheet is a comparison between the form elements in the versions of the survey. Use this advanced feature to get a history of changes made to a survey form, particularly before publishing a new draft version. But also to see exactly what has changed in a draft version at any time.
To export the change log either:
- In the list of surveys, select Export from the context menu
- During a publish procedure, before clicking Publish, click Download change log
Once you have downloaded the spreadsheet, open it to review the changes.
The change log spreadsheet contains four separate worksheets:
- Form Builder - details of the form structure such as fields, questions, configuration, and so on.
- Form Settings - details of the form settings modal such as buttons, thank you page, and so on.
- Form Targeting - details of the form targeting settings, display options, and so on.
- Translations - shows whether there has been a change in translated forms or changes in the default languages. Tip: In order to compare between translations of a draft and published versions, toggle between the draft and published versions and export the translations spreadsheet for each version.
- Field Name - the field or setting name.
- Draft - the value of this field in the draft version of the form.
- Published - the value of this field in the published version of the form.
