An assessment involves two groups of people: your own reviewers inside Vendor Pulse, and the vendor's own staff working in the vendor portal. This guide explains how each side collaborates, where comments live, and how to see who on the vendor side has access.
The two collaboration surfaces are different, so it is worth being clear about them up front:
| Where | Who uses it | What they can do |
|---|---|---|
| Team tab on a vendor | Your organisation | View the vendor's own portal members (read-only list) |
| Assessment Process tab → assessment review | Your organisation | Comment on individual answers, tagging colleagues |
| Vendor portal | The vendor's staff | Answer questions, upload evidence, comment, invite their own colleagues |
vendor:view)vendor:assessment:view, vendor:assessment:review) to work inside the review screenNavigation: Sidebar → Vendors → [select a vendor] → Team
The Team tab is a read-only view of the people the vendor has added to their own portal. You cannot add or remove members from here — that is done by the vendor's own admin inside the vendor portal.
The table shows:
| Column | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Name | The member's name, or their email if no name was given |
| The address their one-time password is sent to | |
| Role | Admin, Collaborator or Viewer |
| Status | Invited, Active or Deactivated |
| Joined | When they first signed in |
| Last Active | When they were last seen in the portal |
Use the search box above the table to find a member by name or email.
The vendor's main contact (SPOC) is the first Admin. Their role cannot be changed, and the vendor cannot demote their last remaining Admin.
Submitting is Admin-only, and the button is hidden from everyone else. A Collaborator or Viewer does not see a disabled Submit Answers button or an explanatory message — the control simply is not there. Because every invited colleague is a Collaborator unless the Admin says otherwise, a vendor can answer an entire questionnaire and still have no way to submit it. Expect this to come up as "our vendor has no submit option".
Navigation: Sidebar → Vendors → [select a vendor] → Assessment Process → open an assessment for review
Comments in Vendor Pulse are attached to specific things — an individual assessment answer, or a risk — rather than to the vendor as a whole. There is no separate "Comments" tab on the vendor page.
When you open a question in the assessment review screen, you will see:
A comment can be up to 500 words. The running word count is shown under the box.
Type @ in the comment box to open the tagging list, then pick a User from your organisation. The person you tag is notified. If you name the same person more than once in a single comment, they receive only one notification.
Editing is restricted:
An edited comment carries an italic (edited) marker. Hovering that marker shows Edited on with the date.
Hover a comment you wrote and click the Delete (bin) icon. A confirmation appears before the comment is removed. The Delete icon only appears on your own comments.
The Comments panel has a search box at the top. It searches the text of the comments on that item.
Navigation: Sidebar → Vendors → [select a vendor] → Manage Risk → open a risk
Risks have their own comment thread, which behaves exactly the same as comments on assessment answers — same Internal/External choice, same 500-word limit, same @mention behaviour, same author-only edit rule.
When you send an assessment, the vendor's SPOC receives an emailed link to the vendor portal. Inside the portal they see a Team Access card at the top of the questionnaire, which tells them what their own role allows.
A vendor Admin can:
The invited person receives their own emailed link and signs in with their own one-time password. The portal warns the Admin that anyone they add will be able to answer questions, upload evidence and add comments on the assessment.
A vendor Admin can also click the avatars in the Team Access card to open the Team Members dialog, where they can change a member's role, Remove a member, or Send Invite again to someone previously removed.
Collaborators only ever see the assessment they were invited to. They have no access to anything else in your Vendor Pulse tenant.
Navigation: Sidebar → Documents, or Vendors → [select a vendor] → Documents
Evidence uploaded by the vendor against assessment questions, and private documents your own reviewers attach, are collected on the vendor's Documents tab. The table shows:
| Column | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Documents | The file name |
| Document Type | Vendor Document or Private Document |
| Assessment Name | The assessment, template, category and question it came from |
| Approval Status | Whether your reviewer has approved or rejected the evidence |
| Risk Title | The risk it is attached to, where applicable |
| Uploaded Date | When it arrived |
Use the row menu → View to preview a file, or the Export button to export documents in bulk. Documents are not uploaded from this tab — vendor evidence arrives through the vendor portal, and your own reviewers attach private documents from within the assessment review screen.
Private Documents are internal only. As the upload dialog states, they are stored against the question or risk for your reference and are never shared with or visible to the vendor.
The Documents entry in the sidebar gives you the same kind of view across every vendor.
A colleague cannot see the vendor at all → Vendor Pulse access is controlled by your organisation's roles and permissions, not by the vendor's Team tab. Ask your administrator to grant them the vendor view permission (vendor:view).
I want to add someone to the Team tab but there is no button → The Team tab is a read-only view of the vendor's own portal members. Only a vendor Admin can invite people, and they do it from Add Collaborator inside the vendor portal.
The Edit icon has disappeared from my comment → You can only edit your own comment within the edit window after posting (15 minutes by default). Once it has passed, post a follow-up comment instead of editing. There is no reply-to-comment action; comments form a single flat thread.
I cannot edit a colleague's comment → This is intentional. Only the author may edit a comment.
The vendor says they never received the assessment link → Check the SPOC email on the vendor's profile is correct and ask them to check spam. You can resend from the assessment row's Send Reminder action.
The vendor says they cannot see a Submit option → They are signed in as a Collaborator or Viewer, not as the Admin. Only the vendor's SPOC can submit. Ask the SPOC to sign in and submit, ask the vendor's Admin to promote that person in the Team Members dialog, or change the SPOC email on the vendor profile to their address. The assessment stays Ongoing until someone with the Admin role submits it.
My comment was rejected as too long → Comments are limited to 500 words. The word counter under the box shows where you are.
The vendor did not get notified about my comment → Check the visibility dropdown. Internal comments deliberately produce no vendor notification; use External if you want the vendor to know.
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