Editing a review

The review workspace is where the owner and the reviewers of a quarterly business review edit it before it goes to the client. You work on one slide at a time: ask the assistant for a change, or drag and configure the blocks yourself. Comments, a check list for the reviewer, saved versions and uploaded files sit in panels beside the slide. Anyone who can use QBR Studio can open a review; whether you can change it depends on its status and on your part in it.

Before you start. The QBR Reporting module must be on and your role must be Administrator, Service Desk Manager or Customer Success. Create a review first with New QBR, as QBR Studio explains, and wait for generation to finish: the workspace is read-only while the review is generating.

Open a review

Select a report on the QBR Studio Home page. The route is /qbr followed by the report's id.

The top of the page shows the title, the status and the client, period, meeting date, owner, who created the review and the template with the version the review was made from. When the template has been saved since, the version reads like v2 (now v3): the review was made from version 2, and only new reviews use the newer version. Pills appear when they apply: Scheduled for a draft that a schedule created, the number of open comments, and Client PDF out of date when the PDF on the client page is older than the slides (it is rebuilt from this version the next time someone downloads it). The strip with page views and downloads, shown once a review is published, is covered in Review, publish and share with the client.

The toolbar has Basic and Advanced, Present, Export, Details and the workflow buttons for submitting, approving and publishing. Edits save by themselves a moment after your last change, and the page shows Saving…, Saved, Unsaved changes or Not saved. Leaving the page saves what is pending.

When a review is not ready, a banner at the top says why: the review is generating, generation failed, changes were requested (with the reviewer's note), the client link has expired, it is waiting for your review, or it is approved and editing it will move it back to Draft.

Choose Basic or Advanced mode

The two modes show the same review in two ways. Your choice is remembered in this browser.

Basic mode needs AI to be on in QBR settings: CSAT sources, metrics and AI. When it is off, the Chat tab says the assistant cannot edit the review and suggests Advanced mode.

Edit by asking the assistant

The Chat tab changes a review in plain words. You always see what will change before it changes.

1. Under Change, choose how much the assistant may touch: Whole deck, the current slide (the button shows its number, such as Slide 3), or a block (select the block on the slide first; the button then shows its name).
2. Type your request, or select a suggestion such as Tighten the executive summary or Add a customer satisfaction slide.
3. Select Send, or press Ctrl and Enter.
4. Read the numbered list of changes the assistant proposes.
5. Select Apply changes to make them, or Discard to drop them.

A version of the review is saved before the changes are applied. After applying, the card says how many changes were made and how many blocks are being regenerated, lists anything it skipped, and offers Undo, which restores the version saved before the edit. You can also restore it later from History.

Arrange slides and blocks

In Advanced mode the slide list on the left lets you shape the deck.

• Select the add button, Add a slide, and choose a layout: Blank, Cover, Section divider, Title and text, Two columns, Executive summary, Service desk, Satisfaction or Recommendations.
• On a slide, use the tools to move it up or down (or press Alt and an arrow key on a focused slide), duplicate it, hide it from the client, or delete it. A hidden slide stays in the review but is left out of the client page, the PDF, the PowerPoint and the presentation.
• With no block selected, the Block tab holds the slide's settings: Slide title, Subtitle, Layout (Title and blocks, Cover or Section divider) and Hide this slide from the client.
• Deleting a block or a slide shows an undo button above the slide, for example Undo delete of slide 4. It stays until the review reloads, for example after a workflow action, a regeneration, a chat edit or a restored version. Using it also undoes anything you changed after the delete.

Add a block

Open the Add tab. Blocks are grouped as Structure, Executive, Service desk, Satisfaction, Value delivered, Security & lifecycle, Strategy & roadmap and Custom. Type in Search blocks to filter. Drag a block onto the slide, or select it to place it where there is room. If the slide is full, you are asked to make room or to add a slide.

On the slide, drag a block to move it and drag a handle to resize it. With a block focused, the arrow keys move it, Shift and the arrow keys resize it, and Delete removes it. A frame shows the block's state: Generating, Not generated, Out of date, or Failed with a Retry button, plus a lock and a count of open comments.

Configure a block

Select a block, then open the Block tab. Which fields appear depends on the kind of block.

An AI block can use only numbers from its evidence metrics; it never invents figures outside them. Text blocks accept Markdown, with Write and Preview views. Images can be PNG, JPG, GIF, SVG or WebP up to 500 KB, or an https link; SVG and WebP are converted to PNG so PowerPoint can show them.

The foot of the tab shows the block's state (Up to date, Edited by hand, Out of date: regenerate to apply your changes, Generation failed and so on) and who edited it last, and has these actions:

• Regenerate (Generate for a block that has never run) rebuilds the block from fresh data. With instruction lets you add a one-off instruction for that run, for example focus on the SLA dip in August.
• Lock keeps the block when the whole review is regenerated; Unlock lets regeneration replace it again. Editing a block's text by hand locks it automatically, so your words survive regeneration.
• Duplicate and Delete.

To rebuild the whole review, select Regenerate in the toolbar. When the review already has content, confirm in the Regenerate the review? dialog by selecting Regenerate. Every unlocked block is rebuilt from fresh data and replaced; locked blocks and hand-written text stay as they are.

Write speaker notes

Under the slide, open Speaker notes and type what to say on that slide. The notes show when you present and are exported to the PowerPoint notes.

Comment on a review

The Comments tab holds comments on a block or on a slide. The tab shows a count of open comments, and the same count appears in the header, on the slide list and on the block.

1. Select a block or slide, or leave nothing selected for the current slide.
2. Choose which comments to list with Block, Slide or All. Select Resolved to include resolved ones.
3. Type your comment in the box labelled Comment on followed by the name of the block or slide, and select Comment.
4. To answer, select Reply. To close a comment, select Resolve; select Reopen to bring it back.
5. Select the line under a comment to show where it points.

When a reviewer requests changes, the note is also added to the review as a comment.

Check the review before approving it

The Review tab lists the blocks a reviewer should look at, for This slide or All slides. The heading counts failures, warnings and unverified numbers. Each entry shows:

• a failed block's error, or Out of date: its settings changed after it was generated.;
• warnings, such as a source that was skipped or a metric that was not available;
• Not found in the evidence, check before approving: followed by figures. An unverified number is one the AI wrote that was not found in the metrics it was given. Check each one, then correct the text or regenerate the block before you approve;
• the sources the block cites, and which model wrote it.

The list is for your team. None of it reaches the client.

Restore an earlier version

The History tab has two parts.

• Versions lists the saved versions of the review. One is saved before every chat edit and when the review is submitted, approved and published. Select Restore… on a version and confirm with Restore. The current review is saved as a new version first, so you can come back.
• Activity is the trail of what happened: generation, edits, submissions, approvals, link changes, exports, e-mails and decisions. For a block that was generated, Run details shows the model, the tokens used, how long it took, the tools it called and the number of unverified numbers.

Restoring needs the same rights as editing.

Upload another tool's report

On the Files tab you can add reports from other tools, such as a backup, security or licensing report, so blocks can use them as evidence.

1. Choose a file in the upload area. PDF, CSV, Excel (.xlsx), text, Markdown, PNG, JPG and WebP are accepted, up to 50 MB each.
2. Wait while the file is analysed. The card shows Analysing…; select Analyse now if it looks stuck, or Retry if the analysis failed.
3. Read the AI summary. Select Edit to set the Title shown in the review, a Category and a Description.
4. Choose how the file is used. Use the summary as evidence lets AI blocks cite it. Add it to the PDF appendix appends a PDF or image file to the end of the PDF export.
5. To remove a file, select the delete button and confirm with Delete file.

The blocks Uploaded report summary and Uploaded report figures read from these files. When AI is off in QBR settings, uploads are kept but not summarised, and they can still go in the PDF appendix.

Change the review's details

Select Details to open Review details.

Select Save details. Changing the title, period or theme of an approved review moves it back to Draft, and it needs approval again.

When a review is read-only

You can edit a Draft, a review with changes requested and a review that failed to generate. An Approved review can be edited too, but editing it moves it back to Draft. A review in review can be edited only by its owner, its reviewers and administrators, who can keep refining it. In the other states the panels say why:

While a review is published you can still change its owner, reviewers, meeting date and client decisions in Details, but not its title, period or theme.

Related pages

• QBR Studio: the Home page and how to create a review.
• Review, publish and share with the client: submit, approve, publish and send the pre-read.
• Presenting and exporting a review: present it and download the PDF or PowerPoint.
• Recommendations and the decision log: the Decisions tab and recommendations.
• QBR metric library: the metrics that blocks draw on.