Providing a Recommendation FAQ

If you have been asked to recommend an application within a SurveyMonkey Apply site, you can refer to our commonly asked questions to assist you if any questions arise.

For questions on updating your account details and login credentials, you can refer to our General Account FAQ.

If you were recently sent a request from the application and have logged in to find no application available to recommend, there are a few potential reasons why this may occur.

NOTE: If you are currently experiencing this issue we would recommend reaching out to the administrators of the site to understand what might be causing the issue.

Once you have completed your recommendation whether by filling out a form or attaching a letter to the site, you will need to submit your recommendation to include it with the application.

To submit your recommendation:

Once you have completed the recommendation task for the application you will need to submit the task. Until the recommendation is submitted the request will appear "In Progress."  Once the recommendation has been completed the "In Progress" status will appear as "Completed" with the date and time it was completed at.

This will allow you to ensure that the recommendation was submitted. The applicant will also be notified that the recommendation has been completed and will be required to confirm and submit the recommendation fully within their application.

NOTE: Whether or not the applicant can view the recommendation will depend on the setup of the site by the administrators.

If you are unable to edit the recommender task within the site there are a few potential reasons:

If you are unable to edit a task and wish to understand why, you can contact the administrator of the site for more information on the application process.

When the request has been accepted or declined, the applicant will be informed within their applicant portal. That way if the request is declined they will be able to send a new request to another recommender.

Depending on the site configurations by the administrators of the site, they may also be sent an email to inform them of the decision.

If you decline the recommendation request, no further steps will be required of you.

If you accept the recommendation request, you will be prompted to complete and submit the recommendation task on behalf of the applicant.

Depending on site configurations put in place by the administrators, they may request that you attach a file for the recommendation, as opposed to filling out an internal form.

If you have been requested to attach a file but are experiencing difficulties there are a few potential reasons this may occur.

Whether or not you can view/download the application will mainly depend on the configurations of the site by the administrative team.

If the functionality has been enabled:

Whether or not the applicant can view your recommendation will depend on the configurations put in place by the administrators of the site. If you wish to inquire more in regards to this we would recommend reaching out to the administrators.

If you have spoken with the applicant who requested the recommendation and they have informed you of the invite, but you have not received an email from the site you can perform the following steps to resolve the issue:

1. Reach out to the applicant and confirm that they have sent the invite to the correct email address and there are no spelling errors.

If the information is correct

2. Check your Spam/Junk Folder. Sometimes these emails can get stuck in the spam/junk folder, depending on your email service provider's spam/security settings.

If you are unable to locate the email in any inbox

3. Have the applicant Resend the Invitation. Once the applicant has resent the invite you can repeat step 2, if necessary.

If the above options don't work:

4. You can contact our support team. It is important that you contact us yourself with no additional recipients on the email. Once we receive your email we will be able to assist you with logging into the site.

The traditional recommendation experience required Recommenders to create an account or log in to an existing SurveyMonkey Apply account to provide recommendations for applicants. Quick Reference on the other hand allows Recommenders to leverage secure, one-time links to provide recommendations for applicants.

Secure, one-time links sent to Recommenders are valid for 14 days OR when the Recommendation Task has been completed OR when the task/stage deadline has elapsed.

Administrators: In terms of the SMA Admin User Interface, the change is minimal; We’ve added an option for the SMA Admin to enable “Quick Reference” as part of the Recommendation Process.

Applicants: The User Interface and Flow for the Applicant will not change. They will still enter the first name, last name, and email address of the recommender to start the process.

Recommender: The User Interface for the Recommender will not change other than it will circumvent the registration/login process if Quick Reference is enabled and limit their view to the specific Recommendation they are accessing.

Reviewers: Enabling Quick Reference will have no change to the Reviewer Experience; Reviewers will still be able to view Recommendation documents as usual.

Start by navigating to your Program Workflow, open up the task settings for your Recommendation Task, and enable “Quick Reference”. Please note: this setting is on the task level, which means if you wish all of your Recommendation Tasks (in the same program or others) to leverage this functionality, each task will need to be updated.

No. Enabling or Disabling Quick Reference will not impact any of the recommendations you have already received.

Yes. Enabling or Disabling Quick Reference is possible even after your Program has gone live, and will have no negative impact on your process.