Anonymous comment follow-up

The results dashboard has an “Anonymous comments & replies” card that lets you reply to a single anonymous free-text comment — and the respondent can reply back — without ever revealing who wrote it.

How it works. The card is button-triggered: click “Show comments” to open the threads for the selected survey/department. Each thread shows the original (already report-visible) comment plus a message log. Write your reply in the box and send. When the respondent re-opens the same link, they see your reply and can reply back.

Anonymity (the core). The link between a respondent and their thread is a random, secret key held only in the respondent’s own browser — it is never stored against any email or identity on the server. You, the manager, get a separate anonymous thread handle and never receive the respondent’s key, so you can never learn who wrote the comment. Comment threads are shown to you only when the survey’s (department-filtered) response count reaches the minimum group size — the same anonymity threshold as the rest of the dashboard — so a thread can never be used to single out a small group.

Who sees it. Admins see the whole organization. A manager sees only their own part of the org tree (their node and below) — never another department’s comments. Employees do not reach the card.

Respondent view. Follow-up is offered only for personal submissions (invite link or personal public link), never in kiosk mode (a shared device). The respondent sees their own thread by re-opening the same link in the same browser.

Availability. The feature is enabled per organization.

Reachable from every question. The thread mechanism above is no longer minted only for free-text-type questions — it now also covers the freeform comment a respondent adds to ANY question via “Add a comment to this question” in the survey-taking view itself (scale, yes/no, matrix, etc.), not just the closing comment box or a dedicated free-text question.