Responding to an Advance

When a collaborator opens their advance, they encounter a structured form built from the modules their advance contains. The experience is designed to be clear and familiar — a scrollable form with distinct sections, inline instructions, and real-time saving so nothing is ever lost.

The Collaborator's View

When a collaborator opens an advance, they see the form laid out with a table of contents on the left side. Each module in the advance appears as a section. When task tracking is enabled, the table of contents also shows completion indicators so collaborators can see at a glance which sections still need attention.

The main area of the page shows the modules in order. Each module can be expanded or collapsed. Inside each module, the collaborator encounters the blocks defined in the module template:

• Content blocks display instructions or explanatory text set up by the production team
• Question blocks present input fields for direct responses
• Request blocks present tables where the collaborator adds line items

Answering Questions

Question blocks present the collaborator with whatever input type was configured — a text field, a date picker, a checkbox, a file upload, a dropdown, and so on. Collaborators fill in their answer directly.

Everything saves automatically. There is no submit button — responses are written as the collaborator types or selects, so there is no risk of losing progress.

Adding Request Line Items

Request blocks work differently from questions. Instead of a single field, the collaborator sees a table of line items they've submitted. To add a new one, they click the Add Request button in the top-right corner of the block.

This opens a form for the new request, where the collaborator fills in the properties defined for that request type. When submitted, the new item appears as a row in the request table. Collaborators can continue adding items until their requests are complete, and can delete items they've added if needed.

Required Modules

If a module is marked required, the collaborator will see a red indicator on that section until it has been completed. Because there is no hard submission gate, collaborators can still save and move between sections freely — the red marking is a visible reminder of what still needs to be addressed, not a blocker.

Editing Responses

Because advancing uses continuous autosave rather than a locked submission flow, collaborators can return and edit their responses at any time.

If a response has already been reviewed by the production team, editing it returns that item to a needs review state automatically. The reviewer is notified that something has changed and can review the updated response before taking further action.

Production Visibility

The production team sees advance responses in real time. Because everything saves continuously, there is no waiting for a collaborator to "submit" — progress is visible as it happens.