External Reviewers

Overview of external reviewers

By adding external reviewers to your approval workflow, you can involve external stakeholders in your approval workflow, ensuring they provide targeted feedback and approvals without unnecessary exposure to unrelated content. Inviting external reviewers to review and approve designs in Beefree also avoids unnecessary back-and-forth across multiple platforms, and keeps everything centralized in one spot. This enhances collaboration, speeds up decision-making, and improves project progression. The ability to add external reviewers provides additional security by granting controlled access to specific designs under review, protecting sensitive information within the workspace. Adding external reviewers to your approval workflow provides a secure, efficient, and client-centric approval management solution.

Who are external reviewers?

External reviewers are individuals outside of your Beefree organization who are important stakeholders throughout your email or page design approval process. You can add external reviewers to your Approval Workflow to ensure your design receives all the approvals it needs before going live.

Example scenario

Imagine you're working on a critical design project and need feedback from a client who isn't part of your workspace. By adding them as an external reviewer to the approval workflow, you can easily share the specific design with the client without exposing other sensitive projects. The client can then review and provide targeted feedback directly on the design. This process keeps your workflow secure and streamlined, ensuring that you get the necessary approvals quickly and efficiently, helping you meet tight deadlines and maintain project momentum.

What this article will discuss

This article will discuss the following topics:

• What external reviewers can see
• How to add external reviewers to your approval workflow
• How external reviewers approve designs
• Co-editing sessions
• External reviewer creates a Beefree account

Prerequisites

Prior to inviting your first external reviewer, ensure you have the following:

• Business or Enterprise plan
• Any role, except Viewer

What external reviewers can see

When you invite an external reviewer to review your Beefree design, they can see the following:

• Preview: External reviewers can see the design preview.
• All comments: External reviewers can leave comments on the design.
• Approval status: External reviewers can see the design status.
• Multilingual design option: External reviewers can see the language alternatives if the design uses Multilingual Designs.
• Desktop/Mobile staging switch option: External reviewers can see the mobile staging.
• Co-edit: External reviewers can see if someone is editing the design while they are inside the same design. They cannot edit it because they do not have permission. 

Note: Review links are public and should not be shared, so managing their privacy is crucial.

What external reviewers can’t see

External reviewers can’t see the following when reviewing your design in Beefree:

• The Edit details icon, which is the pencil icon located in the navbar.
• The Send test option, which is the arrow icon located in the navbar.
• They cannot request a review, but they do see the Ask for a review icon, which is located in the navbar.

Note: External reviewers only have access to the design they are reviewing with commenting permissions. Anything outside of the design related to your Beefree account, they will not have access to.

How to add external reviewers to your approval workflow

Take the following steps to add an external reviewer to your approval workflow:

1. Log in to your Beefree account.
2. Navigate to the design you’d like reviewed.
3. Click the Ask for review icon in the Navbar.

A pop up will appear asking you to customize your message to the reviewer.

4. Customize the prewritten message if you’d like.
5. Review the message information.
6. Click Next.
7. Type the external reviewer’s email address in the Reviewers field.
8. Once the email address appears in the drop-down, select it.
9. Click Send review.

You will receive a Review request submitted confirmation message. An Awaiting review status will appear next to the external reviewer’s email address.

You can also use the Email or Page details section to request a review from an external reviewer. To do this, navigate to your email or page details, click on the Email Review tab, and click the Request review button in the Request a review section. Then, take the same steps outlined above, to submit the review request. 

How external reviewers approve designs

Once an external reviewer receives the request in their email, they can then proceed to review the design. The external reviewer can provide feedback on the design and approve it.

External reviewers can take the following steps to review and approve a Beefree design:

1. Open the email containing the request.

Inside the email you will have the following options:

• Review: Review the design inside the builder and add comments.
• Approve: Approve the design instantly. This link redirects you to the design.
• View in browser: View the design in your browser with a private review link.

2. Select one of the three options to review, approve, or view the design.

Co-editing sessions

In this section, we will discuss the behavior of co-editing sessions for external reviewers.

When an external reviewer and a member are both inside the same design, the session becomes a co-editing session. Throughout this session, external reviewers have the same level of access to the items listed in the What external reviewers can see section of this article. However, if a member enters a co-editing session with an external reviewer, makes changes to the design, and exits the design without saving those changes, the changes will still be saved and applied to the design. This occurs because the co-editing session remains open for as long as the external reviewer is actively inside the design.

Keep this behavior in mind as you work with external reviewers. If you don’t want particular changes to save to your design and you are in a co-editing session with an external reviewer, ensure you undo those changes so your design saves as the version you’d like. 

External reviewer creates a Beefree account

You can invite external reviewers to join Beefree using the same email address at any time. When they do, they become members of a Beefree organization or workspace. With the same email, a user can act as both an external reviewer and a member of a different Beefree account or workspace.

If a user is part of an ongoing approval flow as an external reviewer and is added as a member of the same workspace, they will continue to review the design as an external reviewer using the link in the email they received. If they try to approve the same email as workspace members, they won't be able to.

What can they do instead?

Instead of approving the design as a workspace member, they can do one of the following:

• They can access the design through the link in the email they received.
• The review sender can remove the external user from the reviewers' list. In the next review, they can be included as a workspace member.

Additional considerations

Consider the following when adding external reviewers to your Approval Workflow:

• Once the design is approved, the links included in the review and approval request email will expire. 
• The external reviewer can mention workspace users in comments. Workspace members can mention the external reviewer in comments.
• An external reviewer's comments remain visible to workspace users after the review is complete, and the external reviewer can no longer access the design. The external reviewer will no longer receive notifications and emails even if more comments are added to the thread.
• Include the @ symbol before typing the email address to mention an external reviewer in the comment section.