How To Complete a 'Needs Clarification' Request

Table of Contents

• Summary
• Steps
• Helpful Tips

Summary

Once you complete a Security Questionnaire in Whistic and share it, the recipient can ask for clarification on any of the answers you provided. The subsequent communication takes place directly in our secure platform.

📋 Steps

The steps below will guide you through the process of accessing, reviewing and completing a request for clarification. If you received a notification email with a link, that should allow you to skip steps #1-4.

1. After logging into Whistic, navigate to the Dashboard page.
2. Locate the Outstanding Customer Requests section
3. Confirm the request is available, if so, select Resume

4. A confirmation window will appear. Select Go To Questionnaire.

5. The Clarification Request is automatically filtered to show only the questions that need clarification as well as unanswered questions. In the case that you need to manually set the filter, you can do this by clicking Filter By and Needs Clarification.

6. Select anywhere in the question to review and reply. A new thread will open with the clarification question. Type your reply in the Respond to Reviewer box and select Save when you are ready for the reviewer to receive (sent immediately). If there is no comment from the reviewer, an internal comment was likely sent to you by accident so you can respond accordingly and proceed.

NOTE: If you need to add another colleague to the questionnaire after receiving a Needs Clarification request, you can add them as a 'collaborator'. Once they are added and they log into Whistic, all parties will be able to respond to the Needs Clarification questions and submit the responses back to the requester. See how to add a collaborator HERE.

PLEASE BE AWARE: While you may change your initial response to the question. Please ensure that you respond to all questions flagged for clarification PRIOR to changing any question responses. Changing responses may result in questions being hidden due to questionnaire logic.

If you do this, please reference this change in your response to the reviewer. If you need to provide additional documents, click the paperclip icon in the question and an upload modal will appear for you to provide them.

7. Notice how the progress bar and the questions remaining update as you complete the questions to let you know what percent or how many questions you have remaining.
8. When you are ready to submit your updates for review, select Notify Customer. This step is required as it confirms in the system that you do not wish to add any further clarification. This is especially helpful if you collaborating with others.

Request complete! The requestor will receive a notification to review your updated information.

💡 Helpful Tips

• While your comments are automatically saved and visible to the requestor as you work, the request is not considered complete until you click the Notify Customer button.
• To verify the request has been successfully completed, check your Whistic Dashboard:
  • If the item still appears on your dashboard, click Resume to return to the request and click Notify Customer to finalize it
  • Once properly completed, the request will no longer appear in your outstanding requests