Overview

When a vendor answers a questionnaire, their responses land in the assessment review workspace. There you go through the questionnaire question by question, read each answer and the evidence attached to it, rate the answers that need a rating, approve or reject evidence, raise risks where you need to, and finally send your review to the vendor.

This guide covers how to open the review workspace, how to rate answers, how to handle evidence, comments and private documents, how to bring answers in from a spreadsheet, and what happens when you submit the review.

Prerequisites

• A vendor with at least one assessment
• vendor:view and vendor:assessment:view to open the vendor's Assessment Process tab and the workspace
• vendor:assessment:review to save a rating and to submit the review
• vendor:risk:add if you want to raise risks from answers
• vendor:assessment:add if you also want to send reminders

Opening the Review Workspace

Navigation: Sidebar → Vendors → [select a vendor] → Assessment Process tab

1. Click Vendors in the sidebar.
2. Click the vendor whose assessment you want to review.
3. Open the Assessment Process tab.
4. Set the status dropdown at the top of the list to Completed assessment to see assessments the vendor has submitted, or Ongoing assessment to look at one still in progress.
5. Click the assessment row. The review workspace opens full screen.

The status dropdown has exactly three options:

• Upcoming assessment — scheduled but not yet sent to the vendor.
• Ongoing assessment — sent to the vendor and waiting on them.
• Completed assessment — submitted by the vendor and waiting on you.

There is no separate "Submitted" or "Reviewed" state. See How to Send and Track Questionnaires for how an assessment moves between the three.

The Workspace Layout

Top bar

Metrics strip

• Categories — how many categories the questionnaire is divided into
• Total Questions — how many questions it contains
• Completed — how many the vendor has answered
• Required — how many are mandatory
• Required Completion — the percentage of mandatory questions that are complete

These counts come straight from the vendor's responses, so they move as the vendor works through the questionnaire.

Left pane: categories and questions

Click a category to expand it and see its questions, then click a question to load it on the right. Each category shows how many of its required questions are complete, and a tick once all of them are.

Icons beside a question tell you:

• a marker for a mandatory question
• Review Required — the question needs a rating from you and does not have one yet
• Reviewed — you have rated it

To find a specific question you can:

• Search by question text or category name with Search Question
• Open the filter and choose a review outcome — All Categories, Compliant, Partially Compliant, Non Compliant or Not applicable
• In the same filter, choose whether the vendor has answered — All Questions, Completed or Not Completed
• Click Reset Filters to clear everything

Right pane: the selected question

The question text (with a red asterisk if it is mandatory), the vendor's Answer, the evidence attached to it, your private documents and the comment thread.

Rating an Answer

Only questions set to Organisation Remark Required in the template get a rating. For those, an Organisation Review dropdown appears beside the answer. Other questions have no dropdown — you read them and move on.

1. Select the question.
2. Open the Organisation Review dropdown and choose one of Compliant, Partially Compliant, Non Compliant or Not Applicable. The dropdown is disabled until the vendor has answered the question.
3. The Review Reason dialog opens and shows the outcome you picked. Type a reason if you want to — it is optional, and limited to 500 words.
4. Click Submit Reason. Your rating is saved at this point. If you close the dialog instead, the rating is not saved.
5. Click Save & Next to move to the next question. The button briefly reads Saved.

A saved reason is shown under the answer in a Review Reason box whenever anyone opens that question.

For questions that do not need a rating, the button reads Next Question instead of Save & Next. Previous Question takes you back one question in either case.

If your language is set to English (US), the labels read Organization Review and Organization Remark Required.

What the rating does

• The vendor sees your outcome as a coloured label on that answer in their portal.
• Once you mark an answer Compliant, the vendor can no longer change that answer or its evidence.
• Compliance Percentage on the assessment row is the share of rated answers marked Compliant or Not Applicable.

Reviewing Evidence

Evidence the vendor attached is listed under the answer, headed by the evidence name set in the template.

1. Click an evidence file to open it. It opens in a viewer inside the page rather than downloading. PDFs are shown with your browser's built-in PDF viewer. Images get zoom, rotate, fit-to-page and Download controls. Other file types show "Preview not available" with a Download button. The viewer also has a full screen control.
2. Open the menu on the evidence file and choose Approve or Reject.

The vendor sees each document's status in their portal.

Raising a Risk from an Answer

If an answer reveals something that needs to be tracked as a risk:

1. Click Mark as Risk at the bottom of the question.
2. The Add Risk Confirmation dialog asks "Are you sure you want to add this as a risk?"
3. Click Add Risk to confirm, or Cancel to go back.

A risk is created on the vendor's Manage Risk tab with the question text as its title and Assessment as its source. Open it there to assign, score and manage it. See How to Manage the Vendor Risk Lifecycle.

Comments

Each question has its own comment thread, so a discussion stays attached to the answer it is about. The most recent comment is shown as Previous Comment; Read All opens the Comments panel from the right, which has a search box.

1. Type your comment in the Add Comment box. Bold, italic, underline, strikethrough and lists are available.
2. Choose the comment type from the dropdown next to the button — External (the default) or Internal.
3. Click Add Comment.

This distinction matters: External comments are part of the exchange with the vendor, and the vendor is notified. Internal comments stay with your team. Choose the type deliberately before you post.

Other things worth knowing:

• A comment can be up to 500 words. The counter under the box shows where you stand.
• Typing @ to mention a colleague works on Internal comments only.
• You can edit your own comment for 15 minutes after posting it, and delete your own comment at any time. You cannot change anyone else's.
• An edited comment is marked (edited); hovering the marker shows the date it was edited.

See How to Collaborate on Assessments for the full detail.

Private Documents

Alongside the documents the vendor shares, you can attach your own documents to a question — review notes, audit findings, internal evidence. They are listed under Private Documents, with the note "These documents won't be visible to the vendor".

1. On the question, click Upload Document in the Private Documents section.
2. Under Choose Action, pick Upload New File or Link Unlinked Documents.
3. For Upload New File, drag files onto the upload area or click it to choose them. Accepted types are .pdf, .doc, .docx, .xlsx, .xls, .csv, .jpg, .jpeg and .png. The dialog shows the size limits — by default 15 MB per file and 100 MB in total.
4. For Link Unlinked Documents, pick one or more files from Select from Unlinked Documents. These are files already uploaded for this vendor under Documents that are not yet attached to anything.
5. Click Upload or Link Documents.

Each private document has a menu with View and Delete. Deleting asks you to confirm and cannot be undone.

Importing Answers Collected Outside the Platform

If a vendor sent you their answers in a spreadsheet rather than through the portal, you can load them into the assessment.

1. Click Import Assessment in the top bar. The Import Assessment Questions dialog opens.
2. Click Download Assessment Template. The questions download as an Excel file named after the assessment, with any existing answers already filled in.
3. Fill in the answers. For a text question use the Answer (Text) column; for a choice question pick from the dropdown in Answer (Option Text). Vendor Comment and Evidence File Name are optional. Do not change the other columns.
4. Drag the completed file onto the upload area. Accepted file types are .xlsx, .xls and .zip.
5. Click Import Assessment.

Use a .zip when you also have evidence files to bring in. Put the spreadsheet and the evidence files in the same zip, keep the spreadsheet's name the same as the assessment name, and list each evidence file by its exact file name in the Evidence File Name column (separate several files with commas).

After importing, a message tells you how many answers were imported, how many rows had errors and what the first error was, so you can correct those rows and import again. See How to Import and Export Data in Vendor Pulse for the full list of row errors.

Submitting Your Review

When you have rated the answers:

1. Click Submit Reviews in the top bar.
2. The Confirm Review Submission dialog shows how many questions you rated Compliant, Non Compliant, Partially Compliant and Not Applicable, and the Last Review Submission Date if you have sent a review before.
3. Check the breakdown, then click Submit Review.

What happens:

• The vendor's SPOC is emailed your review summary, with the vendor's risk manager and additional vendor emails copied.
• The assessment is reopened for the vendor and moves back to Ongoing assessment, so they can revise the answers you did not accept and submit again.
• When the vendor submits again, the assessment returns to Completed assessment for your next pass.

Two conditions apply:

• There must be at least one new or changed rating since the last submission. Otherwise you are told there are no pending reviews to send.
• The assessment's due date must not have passed. If it has, the dialog warns that the vendor's portal access has ended and the submission is refused with a message telling you to change the due date. Extend the date with Edit on the assessment row, then submit again.

If you are satisfied with every answer and need nothing more from the vendor, you do not have to submit a review — the assessment simply stays under Completed assessment with your saved ratings.

Troubleshooting

I can't see any vendor responses → The vendor may not have answered yet. Close the workspace and check the Completion Progress and Pending Questions columns on the assessment row.

There is no rating dropdown on a question → That question was not set to Organisation Remark Required in the template, so it does not take a rating.

The rating dropdown is greyed out → The vendor has not answered that question yet.

A rating did not save → The rating is saved when you click Submit Reason in the Review Reason dialog. If you closed that dialog without submitting, choose the outcome again. Saving also needs the vendor:assessment:review permission.

I opened the wrong cycle's assessment → A vendor accumulates one assessment per cycle, so the same vendor name appears on several rows. Check the Scheduled Date on the row before opening it.

Submit Reviews says there are no pending reviews → Nothing has been rated or changed since your last submission.

Submit Reviews is refused because the assessment has expired → The due date has passed. Extend it from the assessment row's Edit action and submit again.

The assessment disappeared from Completed assessment after I submitted → That is expected. Submitting the review reopens it for the vendor, so it is now under Ongoing assessment.

An evidence file will not preview → Only PDFs and images preview in the browser. Use Download for other file types.

I can't edit a comment I posted → Comments can only be edited by their author, and only for 15 minutes after posting. After that, post a follow-up comment.

A comment was rejected → A comment cannot be empty and cannot exceed 500 words.

The @ mention list does not open → Mentions work on Internal comments only. Switch the comment type to Internal.

A private document upload was rejected → Check the file type and the per-file and total size limits shown in the dialog.

My import brought in fewer answers than expected → The result message reports the number of errors and the first of them. Fix those rows in the downloaded template and import again.

I don't see Review with ZIN AI → The button appears only when the feature is enabled for your organisation. Contact us if you would like it turned on.

Need more help? Contact support@zeron.one