How to Write Reviewer Guidance for a Review Round in Dapple

Reviewer guidance in Dapple is the general instructions you give reviewers before they score submissions. It should covers how to approach the round, what to prioritise, and any context reviewers need before scoring. The AI Guidance Generator can scan your submission form and draft a starting point, but you know your programme better so edit the draft rather than using it as-is. Saved guidance appears as a permanent tab reviewers can return to throughout the round.

Reviewer guidance in Dapple is the general briefing text attached to a Review Round, shown to every reviewer in that round before and during scoring. It's set on the Guidance step — step 2 of the six-step Review Round wizard (Name & Stage, Guidance, Deadlines, Scoring, Members, Notifications). The field is optional, but it's your best chance to align reviewers before scores start coming in inconsistent.

Use it to cover:

The editor supports bold, italic, strikethrough, bulleted and numbered lists, and links — format guidance as a scannable checklist, not a paragraph. Guidance is round-specific, not project-wide: write it for what that particular round is evaluating.

Open the Review Round setup wizard and move to step 2, Guidance. The wizard lands here automatically after Name & Stage, or use the step indicator to jump back at any time. Type your instructions into the rich text box, format as needed, and click Continue. Guidance isn't locked once you continue. Return and edit it at any time — reviewers see the update the next time they open the guidance tab, with no need to republish or reopen the round.

Dapple can draft your reviewer guidance for you. Triggering the AI Guidance Generator on the Guidance step scans your submission form — its fields, questions, and any scoring criteria you've already set up — and produces a first draft.

Treat the draft as a placeholder, not a finished answer. It can't infer your programme's priorities, tone, or context from past rounds. Read it, tighten the language, and add anything the AI couldn't know — known edge cases, a conflicts-of-interest reminder, programme-specific context. The generated text lands in the same rich text box as manual guidance, so editing it afterwards works exactly the same as writing from scratch.

What's the difference between reviewer guidance and a criteria description in Dapple? Reviewer guidance and criteria descriptions look alike but do different jobs. Reviewer guidance is general — it covers the whole round and lives in its own space. A criteria description is specific — it sits under one scoring criterion, on the Scoring step, and only explains that criterion.

Use reviewer guidance for anything that applies across all criteria: the brief, tone, context, process. Use a criteria description for what a high or low score looks like on one dimension, such as Technical Skill versus Originality. Guidance without criteria descriptions leaves reviewers unclear on scoring edge cases; criteria descriptions without guidance give reviewers no sense of the round's bigger picture.

Once saved, reviewer guidance appears as its own tab in the reviewer's Review Account, separate from their assigned submissions. Reviewers can open it at any point during the round — not just when they first sign in — so it works as a standing reference, not a one-time message.

This matters for reviewers scoring across several sittings, sometimes days apart, who'd otherwise rely on memory or dig back through an email. Updates apply immediately: reviewers see the current version next time they open the tab. There's no version history, so tell reviewers directly — for example with a bulk message — if a change is significant.

Yes. Guidance is set per Review Round, not per project or organisation — every round gets its own blank Guidance step and independent text. This matters most in multi-round programmes, where an early triage round and a later finalist round evaluate different things: first-round guidance might focus on eligibility checks and obvious declines; a finalist round's guidance might ask reviewers to weigh submissions against each other rather than score in isolation.

Guidance doesn't carry over automatically between rounds. Write it fresh for each one — copying an earlier round's text across without adjusting it is a common way reviewers end up briefed for the wrong stage.

Strong reviewer guidance answers the questions a reviewer would otherwise ask you directly. At minimum, cover:

Keep it scannable — reviewers read a short bulleted brief far more reliably than a dense paragraph. If you're using the AI Guidance Generator as a starting point, check the draft against this list. The AI can see your form fields; it can't see the judgement calls specific to your programme.