Setting up reviews in Dapple takes three parts: create a Review Round on an in-progress stage, get submissions to your reviewers, and use the results to decide what moves forward. A Review Round in Dapple holds the guidance, deadlines and scoring for one stage's review, and is created in a six-step wizard from the Workflow & Reviews tab. You can then assign reviewers to submissions yourself from the submissions list or the Stages board, or let the round send every submission that reaches the stage to a reviewer pool automatically.
What do I need before setting up reviews in Dapple?
An in-progress stage. Review Rounds can't be added to New or Completed stages.
Reviewers with Dapple accounts. Invite anyone who doesn't have one — see How to Add a User. Give external judges the Reviewer permission only.
A scoring approach: a single Rating per submission, or Rubric scoring with weighted criteria.
A decision on how submissions reach reviewers: assigned by you, or sent automatically.
Step 1: Find the stage
Open your project and select the Workflow & Reviews tab. Each in-progress stage column has a Review Round section. A stage showing "Unavailable for stage" isn't in progress. If no stage has a Review Round section, turn on Review groups in the project's Settings tab.
Step 2: Create the Review Round
Select + Add review round on the stage to open the six-step wizard.
Wizard step | What you set |
1. Name & stage | The Stage and Review Name. To reuse another round's guidance, deadlines, review counts, scoring and notifications, select the arrow beside Continue and choose Copy from. |
2. Reviewers | Whether submissions are sent to reviewers automatically, and to whom. See Step 3 of this guide. |
3. Guidance | Instructions shown to reviewers — what to look for and what each score means. |
4. Deadlines | An optional due date shown to reviewers: a specific date, or a number of days from when each submission is sent. |
5. Scoring | Rating (one score per submission) or Rubric scoring (named, weighted criteria giving a total out of 100). |
6. Notifications | Reviewer emails (New reviews assigned is on by default) and admin alerts for submitted reviews, declined reviews and completed rounds. |
Select Generate the rest with AI to draft guidance and a scoring rubric from your form. Treat the result as a first draft. Select Create panel at the end and the Review Round appears in the stage column.
Step 3: Choose how submissions reach reviewers
This is the Reviewers step of the wizard. The Send automatically when a submission reaches this stage toggle decides everything else.
Setting | What happens | Use it when |
Off | Nothing is sent when a submission reaches the stage. You assign reviewers yourself. | Awards and prizes where entries are allocated after closing, or any time you want to choose who reviews what. This is the most common setup. |
On — Chosen reviewers | Every submission that reaches the stage goes to every reviewer in the pool. | A small panel where everyone reviews everything. |
On — Share them out | Dapple spreads submissions evenly across the pool. You set how many reviewers each submission goes to. | High volumes, or open calls where submissions arrive over time. |
With automatic sending on, add reviewers to the Reviewer pool with + Add reviewer. With Share them out, set Send each submission to … reviewers from this pool. For example, 100 submissions and 5 reviewers: set it to 1 and each reviewer gets 20; set it to 2 and every submission is reviewed twice, so each reviewer gets 40.
With automatic sending off there is no reviewer pool, and the step shows only the toggle.
Step 4: Assign reviewers to submissions
If automatic sending is off, assign reviewers once the round is saved:
From the submissions list: open a submission's menu and select Send to Reviewers…, or select several and choose With selected → Send to Reviewers.
From the Stages board: open a submission card's menu and select Send to Reviewers….
You can assign different reviewers to different submissions in the same round, so there's no need to create a stage or round for each reviewer. Reviewers who haven't accepted their invite yet can still be assigned — the submissions are waiting when they accept.
If automatic sending is on, submissions go to the pool as they reach the stage. Reviewers receive an email (if enabled) and the submissions appear in their Review Account.
Step 5: Reviewers complete their feedback
Reviewers work from their Review Account, which has three queues:
Awaiting Review: assigned but not started.
In Progress: started, with feedback saved as a draft.
Completed: finished and sent back to your team.
Reviewers score against your criteria, add comments and submit. They can't see each other's scores. Reviewers find their submissions under My Reviews in the account menu. Only people with the Reviewer role can be sent submissions to review.
Step 6: Track progress and view results
Track progress from the round's Stats section, the Reviewers section in the left-hand navigation, or the Assigned Reviewers column in the submissions list. For each submission you can see:
Each reviewer's score, vote and comments.
The average score and leading vote.
Weighted totals, if you use rubric scoring.
Whether the minimum number of reviews has been reached.
Step 7: Make decisions and move submissions on
Sort submissions by review score, select the ones you want and bulk move them to the next stage or a Rejected stage. You can also drag cards between columns on the Stages board. A later stage can have its own Review Round with different reviewers, guidance and scoring.
Best practice for setting up reviews
Leave automatic sending off unless you need submissions to reach reviewers as they arrive.
Use Share them out to split a large volume evenly, rather than a stage per reviewer.
Set the number of reviewers per submission to at least your minimum review count.
Finalise scoring criteria before anyone starts — changing them later recalculates weighted totals.
Write guidance that describes what each score level means.
Set a due date and check progress before it passes.
Turn on blind review if applicant identity could influence scores.