Good Grants allows reviewers to leave comments on applications during evaluation. Comments can provide additional context for scores or highlight important feedback. Commenting is supported across all reviewing modes.
Types of reviewing comments
Reviewers can leave comments in two ways:
- Overall application comment
- Available in all reviewing modes
- Appears as a comment box at the bottom of the application
- Comments on individual scoring criteria
- Available in Scoring mode only
- Allows reviewers to comment on specific scoring criteria
Enable overall application comments
- In the Manage workspace, go to Reviewing > Settings > Score sets
- Click the name of the score set
- Open the 'Display' tab
- Under 'Commenting', select Comment on application invited
- Click Save
You can also enable Comment on application required to make comments mandatory before reviewing is complete. Reviewers can optionally attach files when leaving comments using the file upload icon.
Enable comments on scoring criteria
To allow reviewers to comment on each scoring criterion:
- In the Manage workspace, go to Reviewing > Settings > Score sets
- Click the name of the score set
- Open the 'Display' tab
- Under 'Commenting', select Comments on every score invited
- Click Save
You can also select Comment on every score required to make comments mandatory for each criterion.
Share comments between reviewers
Programs on Premium plans and above can allow reviewers to view each other’s comments.
- In the Manage workspace, go to Reviewing > Settings > Score sets
- Select the score set
- Open the 'Display' tab
- Under 'Commenting', enable Users can see each others’ comments on this score set
- Click Save
Next update the reviewer role permissions:
- Go to Settings > Users > Roles
- Select the reviewer role used in the panel
- Click Advanced
- Set Scores (others) View to Allow
- Click Save
Share comments with applicants
Reviewing comments can be shared with applicants through a feedback round.
- In the Manage workspace, go to Reviewing > Settings > Score sets
- Select the score set
- Open the 'Display' tab
- Under 'Commenting', enable Display comments on feedback view
- Click Save
Configure a feedback round to make these comments visible to applicants. Learn more in Feedback: sharing reviewer scores and comments with applicants.
Export reviewer comments
Grant managers can export reviewers’ scores and comments from the leaderboard.
- In the Manage workspace, go to Reviewing > Leaderboard
- Open the Export drop-down
- Select Scores + comments
- Choose Excel or CSV
A download link will be sent to your email once the export is ready. Learn more in Ultimate guide to exports.
Good to know
- Comments are not shown to applicants by default. Applicants can see comments only when a feedback round is configured.
- Internal comments are never shared with applicants.
- Internal comments can be disabled by turning off Enable internal comments in the score set.
- Reviewers can upload files with comments (supported formats include .gif, .jpg, .jpeg, .png, .doc, .docx, .pdf, .xls, .xlsx).
- Reviewing fields autosave every 2–3 seconds during scoring.
- If required comments are missing, reviewers can still move to another application but their assignment will not be marked complete.
Video overview