Q&A Introduction
A structured, documented question and answer process (Q&A) with clearly defined communication workflows between buy-side and sell-side experts is an indispensable part of many transaction projects. For this, the Drooms Q&A feature provides a powerful set of different roles, options, and functionalities for tailor-made Q&A set-ups. Following you will find a brief introduction to help you get started as intended Q&A participant.
- Once a Q&A process has been set up and started by the data room administrators, you will receive an e-mail invitation and can access the Q&A.
- The Drooms UI will now feature two entry points for working on questions and answers in two different ways:
- Q&A Dashboard: Once you select a project with an active Q&A, the project’s tab bar will show a new tab ‘Q&A’ for accessing the separate Q&A dashboard for working on all relevant questions and answers altogether.
- The Q&A dashboard lists overall all questions and answers you and your team mates may have asked, or otherwise worked upon, as well as those still pending action, and shared FAQ.
- Depending on your role within the Q&A you can add further questions, submit, distribute, answer, or approve them, and execute all other possible actions.
- An important feature is the detailed Q&A history thread display visualising for answer-side teams every step and action taken for answering questions.
- Q&A panel: The document viewer in the Data Room section will show on the right a new tab ‘Q&A’ for viewing and working on the questions and answers attached to a particular document directly in the index.
- The Q&A panel in the document viewer lists all questions and answers related to the currently selected document in view, which you or your team mates may have asked, or otherwise worked upon, as well as those still pending action, and shared FAQ.
- Depending on your role within the Q&A you can here also add further questions, submit, distribute, answer, or approve them, while other more specific actions are only possible in the Q&A dashboard.
- The important feature about working in the Q&A panel is that you can view and read the reference document the questions are about in parallel.
- The Q&A panel in the document viewer lists all questions and answers related to the currently selected document in view, which you or your team mates may have asked, or otherwise worked upon, as well as those still pending action, and shared FAQ.
- Q&A Dashboard: Once you select a project with an active Q&A, the project’s tab bar will show a new tab ‘Q&A’ for accessing the separate Q&A dashboard for working on all relevant questions and answers altogether.
- The features and options that the Drooms UI offers you for participating in a Q&A depend upon the role or roles assigned to you. Open the Q&A dashboard to view your role(s) and the team or teams you belong to. They will be displayed in the panel to the right, when no question is selected, yet. Possible roles are:
- Question: As member of one or more question teams you ask questions about the provided documents and receive and read given answers.
-> read all about asking questions - Selection: As member of one or more selection teams you withhold, reject, and submit questions asked by one or more question teams ensuring that the most relevant and most precise questions are forwarded, especially if question limits apply to the question team(s) you are responsible for.
-> read all about selecting questions - Distribution: As member of one or more distribution teams you reject questions submitted to the answer-side, which do not meet certain standards, or are unclear, and forward questions to another distribution team or a most suited answer team.
-> read all about distributng questions - Answer: As member of one or more answer teams you principally answer questions, but also may reject questions, which do not meet certain standards, or are unclear, if there is no respective distribution step configured in the Q&A, may reassign questions to better suited answer teams, if allowed, and can add follow-up answers to already given answers.
-> read all about answering questions - Approval: As member of one or more approval teams you can review the work of the answer-side teams preceding your approval team in the configured workflows, reassign questions to preceding answer-side teams and other answer teams, review and edit answers yourself, and approve and forward answers to further approval teams or the question-side, if you are member of a final approval team.
-> read all about approving questions and answers - Visitor: As member of the visitor team you can review all questions forwarded to the answer-side and the respective answers, and monitor the overall answer process, but not interfere or act yourself.
> read all about viewing all questions and answers
- Question: As member of one or more question teams you ask questions about the provided documents and receive and read given answers.
Administrators without a designated role in a Q&A will by default have the same view and permissions as visitors.
- In many cases only one role will be assigned to you, but the Drooms Q&A allows also to assign multiple roles and team memberships to a user. In any case the Q&A UI will adopt and not only offer just those information and functionalities required for a particular role or combination of roles assigned to you, but also related to the specific state of each question and answer.
- Please check your Q&A notification settings to ensure you are notified about new answers and questions and answers requiring action when you are offline.
-> read more about editing personal notifications settings - The access to the Q&A will be limited in time. If the Q&A button and the Q&A panel disappear, either your individual access permissions may have been removed, or the general access of your Q&A team (question teams) may have been terminated, or the Q&A as such has been closed.