What does the "Enable Iterative Feedback" checkbox do?

The Enable Iterative Feedback checkbox is on the Assessment Settings > Cohorts tab. When ticked, it turns on email-based matching so that the same respondent (or cohort contact) returning to the assessment is automatically recognized and their new response is linked as an iteration of their previous one. What this looks like in practice depends on the cohort type.

With Cohort Type = Single Respondent

When the checkbox is ticked on a Single Respondent cohort:

• The system automatically creates a Cohort Initiation every time a respondent is invited (via Add Response, CSV upload, API, or a shareable external link). You do not need to manually create a cohort for each respondent.
• The system matches new responses to previous ones using the respondent's email address, so a returning respondent is automatically linked to their earlier iteration.
• You can schedule automatic reassessments at one or more future points through the Cohort Iterations setup. The schedule is specified as a number of days from the previous initiation or from the previous completion date.
• You can use different report templates for different iterations (typically the first iteration uses a baseline template and subsequent iterations use one that shows comparison data across iterations).

With Cohort Type = Group/360 (and External Cohort enabled)

The checkbox is also useful for Group and 360 cohorts, but only in combination with External Cohort Initiation. In that case:

• When someone initiates a cohort using the External Cohort URL, the system recognizes the cohort contact's email address if it has been used before.
• A prompt appears asking whether to create a new cohort or create a new iteration of the existing cohort, so the contact can choose to track the same team or 360 subject over time.
• Subsequent iterations are linked to the original cohort, enabling iteration-aware reporting at the cohort level.

Important trade-off: same-email cohorts

Enable Iterative Feedback is what drives the automatic email-based matching. With the checkbox ticked, you cannot have multiple separate cohorts for the same email address. The system will treat any new submission with that email as an iteration of the original.

If you need to create multiple independent cohorts for the same email contact (for example, the same admin creating cohorts for different teams), deselect Enable Iterative Feedback on the Cohort Settings tab. Without the checkbox, the system will not match by email, and each cohort initiation will be treated as a separate cohort.

Reference articles

• For Single Respondent setup: Setting Up Iterations for Individual Feedback Reporting.
• For Group / 360 iterations (Cohort Iterations): Setting Up Assessment Iterations.
• For external cohort setup: Setting Up External Cohort Initiations.