Approving a Drafted Reply

What arrives

When auto-reply is set to draft for approval, you get an email with the review and the reply Dinopix wrote for it. Low ratings get a red or amber accent, so the ones that need a careful read stand out. The email has two links: Read and approve and Change it first.

Opening the email posts nothing

This matters more than it sounds. Mail apps and security scanners routinely open every link in a message before a person sees it. If the link itself posted the reply, a scanner could reply to your customers on your behalf.

So Read and approve only opens an approval page showing the review and the draft again. The reply is posted when you press the button on that page, which is the first moment a person is definitely involved. If you ever see a reply posted that you did not press for, that is worth reporting.

The approval page

• Post to Google (or Facebook, Instagram, Judge.me) publishes the draft as it is, and the page confirms Your reply is live.
• Change it first opens the review in Dinopix, with the draft already in the reply box. Edit it, or regenerate it, then press Post to Google (the button names the platform). For ProductReview or Trustpilot the button reads Save & copy: it saves the reply in Dinopix and copies it, ready to paste on the platform. This step needs you to be logged in, because editing what goes out under your name is an account action.
• Discard throws the draft away. Nothing is posted, and the review is still there for you to answer yourself.

For a platform Dinopix cannot post replies to, such as ProductReview, the button reads Save this reply instead. It saves the reply against the review in Dinopix, and the page tells you that you still need to post it on the platform yourself.

You do not need to be logged in to approve

The link carries its own single-use code, so approving or discarding works from your phone without signing in. Three things follow from that:

• Treat the email as sensitive. Anyone you forward it to can post that reply.
• The link works once. After you post or discard, it is spent. Opening it again says the link has already been used, and nothing is posted a second time.
• The link expires after seven days. The date is at the bottom of the email. If you do nothing, no reply is posted.

If the link does not work

• It has expired. The draft was not posted. Open the review in Dinopix and reply from there.
• The review was already answered. If someone replied first, in Dinopix or directly on the platform, the draft is withdrawn rather than posted on top of it.
• It contains something on your never-say list. Your brand voice rules are checked again when you approve, in case they changed after the draft was written. The reply is held back and the page says which rule it broke. Change it in the app.
• The review no longer exists. If the customer deleted it, there is nothing left to reply to and nothing is posted.
• Google or another platform is temporarily unavailable. Nothing is posted, and the same link works again in a few minutes.
• The platform refused it. Google or Facebook can reject a reply, usually because access was removed and Google or Facebook needs reconnecting. Nothing is posted, the draft goes back to waiting, and you can try again from the app.

Settings > Auto-reply activity lists every draft still waiting for you, and you can always reply by hand from the Reviews page instead.