Setting Up How Member Reviews Are Approved On The Website

Link: https://support.brilliantdirectories.com/support/solutions/articles/12000014153

How new member reviews are approved is set on each membership plan. Go to Finance » Membership Plans (1), click Edit on the plan, and open the Profile Page tab (2).

Edit Membership Plan page with Finance Membership Plans in the menu (1) and the Profile Page tab (2).

The review approval workflow is controlled by two settings in the Member Review Settings section of that tab:

  1. Require All Reviews To be Approved by Admin First: whether an administrator must approve new reviews before they are published.
  2. Ability to Accept and Delete Reviews: whether members can accept or delete the reviews submitted to their profile.

Member Review Settings on the plan with Require All Reviews To be Approved by Admin First (1) and Ability to Accept and Delete Reviews (2).

The combination of these two settings decides the status every new review gets. The four possible workflows are explained below. The statuses are the ones shown on Interactions » Member Reviews.


Scenario 1

Require All Reviews To be Approved by Admin First: SET TO NO
Ability to Accept and Delete Reviews: SET TO NO

With both set to No, every review submitted on the website is Accepted right away and appears live on the member's profile page, and on the homepage when the latest reviews are shown there.


Scenario 2

Require All Reviews To be Approved by Admin First: SET TO NO
Ability to Accept and Delete Reviews: SET TO YES

Every review is set to Pending, waiting for the member. The review is not published until the member accepts it on the Manage Reviews page of the member dashboard. The member also receives an automated notification that a review is waiting.


Scenario 3

Require All Reviews To be Approved by Admin First: SET TO YES
Ability to Accept and Delete Reviews: SET TO YES

Every review is set to Admin Review. The admin gets an email notification that a review was submitted (when Notify Admin when review submitted? is on in the review settings) and approves the review on the Member Reviews page.

» Approving Member Reviews from the Admin


Scenario 4

Require All Reviews To be Approved by Admin First: SET TO YES
Ability to Accept and Delete Reviews: SET TO NO

Every review is set to Admin Review. Since members cannot accept or delete reviews, only the admin decides: the status choices for these reviews are Accepted, Admin Review and Declined, and Pending is not offered. When the admin changes a review to Accepted, the Change Review Status window asks whether to send email notifications.

» Approving Member Reviews from the Admin


Email Templates Linked To Reviews

Depending on the review approval settings, different email templates are sent to the reviewer, the member or the site administrator. They can be customized under Emails » Email Templates; type review in Filter By Keyword (1) to find them (2).

  • admin-review-notification: tells the admin a review was submitted.
  • update-pending-reviews: reminds a member that reviews are waiting for approval.
  • recommendation-member, recommendation-visitor and recommendation-accepted: sent to the member and the reviewer, as set on the Notifications tab of the review settings.

Email Templates filtered by the keyword review (1), showing the admin-review-notification template (2).