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Reporting on Feedback document responses
Who is this article for?
Users who want to learn to report on feedback document responses.
PleaseReport or database read access will be required for some of these steps.
Feedback documents use special styles in Word that allow users to answer feedback questions when added to a review in Please Review, and this article explains how to report on the various aspects involved.
1. Using the reconciliation report
The reconciliation report provides a breakdown of all feedback document data. If you need to report on the underlying data, refer to the following sections.
If you have paid for API access, you can call the API to download the report programmatically.
2. Accessing feedback answers
The answers to feedback questions are stored in the T_Comment table of the database. You can query this table directly or access the corresponding view in PleaseReport.
The following table shows the fields in T_Comment and their purpose:
| Field | Description |
|---|---|
| DocumentId | The Please Review ID of the document (joins to T_Document.ObjectId). |
| ReviewId | The Please Review ID of the review (joins to T_Review.ObjectId). |
| ParagraphId | The Please Review ID of the paragraph in the Word document containing the related question (maps to files as covered in the next section). |
| SubjectId | The Please Review ID of the user responding (joins to T_Subject.ObjectId). |
| CreateDate | The datetime when the answer was first submitted. |
| UpdateDate | The datetime when the answer was last updated. |
| CommentType | Whether the response is a single response (R) or multiple bullet point responses (B). |
| ParagraphText | The answer given by the user. |
| CommentNumber | The order in which users answered the questions. |
| CategoryText | The type of question or style asked (maps to the FB_[name] of the style in the original Word document). |
| CommentSequence | For bullet types, the order of the answers. |
3. Extracting feedback questions without server access
Questions are not stored in the database. To match database answers to their corresponding questions, you need to work with files outside the database.
To extract questions without server access:
- Go to the Download Documents page.
- Select Select Comments.
- Tick the Include Paragraph Ids option.
- Click OK.
The download link under the original document will now display paragraph IDs next to each question.
To extract question data programmatically, you can call Word and search for the specific ID. This may cause challenges if other lines in the document contain square brackets with the same number, but the attached PowerShell sample (Get-FeedbackQuestionFromWordDocWithParagraphIds.zip) provides a starting point for such a script.
Note: Support cannot provide further assistance with scripting as this falls outside the scope of standard support. The sample is provided as an example only.
4. Extracting feedback questions with server access
If you have access to the Please Review server, you can extract question content from the server-side map1 XML file in the document files folder.
To locate the file:
- Navigate to the document files folder for the document ID in question.
- Find the file named [document_id].map1.xml (for example, 1234.map1.xml where 1234 is the document ID).
To extract question data programmatically, navigate the XML to find the specific paragraph ID (using the eight-digit version of the paragraph IDs), then extract the corresponding text content. The attached PowerShell sample (Get-FeedBackQuestionFromServerXML.zip) provides a starting point for such a script.
Note: Support cannot provide further assistance with scripting as this falls outside the scope of standard support. The sample is provided as an example only.