How-to Guide: Feedback Templates, Tags & Focus-Area Mentions
How-to Guide: Feedback Templates, Tags & Focus-Area Mentions
This guide walks you through the three pieces of the new feedback-templates feature and where to find them inside
weCLIMB. It's written for district and building administrators who will set up the library, and for observers who will
use it during walkthroughs.
https://cdn.mersoft.com/feedback_template_overview.mp4
Overview
The feature has three layers. Each one works on its own, but they're designed to work together.
1. Tags are the vocabulary of the feature. They organize the template library and provide the focus areas observers use
to annotate feedback.
2. Feedback Templates are reusable statements administrators write once and any observer can insert into a walkthrough
comment.
3. Focus-area mentions are inline # chips observers drop into feedback to tag what they're seeing as they write it —
either a sentiment (Reinforcement / Refinement) or a focus-area tag.
Everything administrative lives under the Observe section of the admin sidebar.
Part 1 — Setting up Tags
Tags serve two jobs: they group templates together, and any tag marked as a focus area also becomes available to
observers inside the feedback editor.
Find it
Admin sidebar → Observe → Tags
Create a tag
1. Click New Tag in the top right of the Tags index.
2. Give the tag a name (for example, Student Engagement).
3. Check Available as focus area if you want observers to be able to tag their feedback with this tag using # in the
editor. Leave it unchecked for administrative-only tags that should only organize the template library.
4. Save.
The tags index shows, for each tag, how many templates and questions reference it and whether it is a focus area. Use
the search box and the Active toggle to find what you need. Tags can be archived (and un-archived) from the row menu
instead of being deleted, which preserves your historical data.
Part 2 — Building the Feedback Template library
Find it
Admin sidebar → Observe → Feedback Templates
Load the starter library (optional)
If you haven't created any templates yet, the Feedback Templates page shows a Load starter templates button. Clicking it
seeds your district with a curated starter library of feedback statements organized across a set of instructional tags.
It's a one-click way to give observers something useful immediately; you can then edit, archive, or extend any of the
starter content.
Create a template
1. Click New Template in the top right of the Feedback Templates index.
2. Fill in:
- Name — what observers will see in the picker. Keep it short and memorable.
- Sentiment — Reinforcement, Refinement, or Neutral.
- Tags — one or more tags (see Part 1). Tags control filtering in the picker and also drive context-aware
suggestions on tagged questions.
- Template Text — the actual feedback, authored in the same rich text editor observers use. Formatting, lists, and
colors all carry through to the inserted feedback.
3. Save.
Manage your templates
The Feedback Templates index has search, a Sentiment column, a Tag column, and filter/status controls. Use the row menu
to Edit, Archive, or Activate a template. Archiving hides a template from observers without deleting it.
Map tags to questions (for context-aware suggestions)
When a question on a rubric is tagged, templates sharing those tags are automatically prioritized in the observer's
picker while they're writing feedback on that question.
1. Go to Observe → Questions and open the question you want to tag.
2. On the question detail page, click Manage Tags next to the tag list.
3. Select one or more tags in the modal and save.
That's all it takes. No code, no rebuilding the form — the observer's editor will start surfacing matching templates the
next time they answer that question.
Part 3 — Using templates during a walkthrough
This is what observers see. Nothing here needs to be configured — if the district has built templates, the picker is
already on the toolbar.
Insert a template
1. Start a walkthrough and begin entering feedback on any question comment or the overall remark.
2. In the rich text toolbar above the feedback field, click the template picker icon (the document icon near the right
side of the toolbar).
3. A panel opens with:
- A search box at the top
- A Sentiment filter (Reinforcement, Refinement, Neutral)
- Tag filters down the left side
- The list of matching templates
4. Click any template to insert its text at your cursor. You can now edit it the same way you'd edit any other
feedback.
Templates are starting points. Personalize them, trim them, combine them — the inserted text becomes normal feedback the
moment it lands in the field.
Tag feedback with # mentions
Inside the feedback field, type #. A small menu appears with:
- Reinforcement and Refinement at the top
- Every tag the district has marked as a focus area
Use the arrow keys or your mouse to pick one. A styled chip drops in at the cursor. Chips are single objects — you can
delete them with Backspace, but you can't edit them mid-word. Drop as many as you need.
When you insert a template, any sentiment and focus-area tag chips associated with that template are auto-appended to
the feedback. That means a single click gives you both the language and the tagging. Delete any chip you don't want.
Chips are visible to the teacher in the walkthrough review and in the exported PDF, and behind the scenes they feed
district reporting so leadership can see what's being observed across the organization.
Where everything lives in the sidebar
Under the Observe admin section (at the bottom of the group):
- Feedback Templates — template library, create/edit/archive, starter seed
- Tags — tag library, focus-area flag, archive/activate
Observer-facing pieces (template picker on the toolbar, # mention menu) appear automatically in the rich text editor
wherever observers enter feedback — question comments and the overall remark.
A few things to know
- Templates are optional. Free-text feedback still works exactly as it did before.
- Observers always have the final word. Inserted template text is fully editable, and chips can be removed before
saving.
- Nothing migrates. Existing walkthroughs, forms, and feedback are untouched. This capability layers on top of the
platform you already use.
- Mobile supported. The same templates and focus-area tags are delivered to the weCLIMB mobile experience.
