How it works

QA Tool

Tickets are sent from CDR Link into the QA Tool for a final review to sort and archive, or remove PII (publicly identifiable information), so only what is safe is shared.

Signing In

The first step to access the QA Tool is to sign in using your credentials.

You will see a “Sign-in” screen similar to the one below.

Sign-in page for the QA tool

After that you will have to review the consent form which talks about the tool’s operator, the information we collect and how we use it, you need to agree to the consent form to gain access to the tool, to do so check the continue box and click on confirm, the webform will ask if you wish to save your choice using cookies, select yes to skip this step in the future or no if you wish to go through the consent form every time you use the tool.

There are two screens for this step.

Screen 1:

Waterbear QA tool initial screen

Screen 2:

Waterbear QA tool consent screen

To access the QA Tool you will be provided with a URL link, and you will also need a username and a password. Open your browser and type in your customized URL.

The QA Tool is currently designed with Cloudflare which provides an additional layer of security. All users must be authenticated before gaining access to the QA Tool. This option can be removed or changed based on your project’s desired needs.

Once you sign in you will see the home screen which is similar to the one below.

Dashboard View

On the homescreen you will see a list of all the tickets ready for review, from the most recent at the top to the oldest at the end.

Waterbear QA tool dashboard

  1. Home Button.
  2. Review. On this tab, you will find all the tickets that have not been approved yet.
  3. Export. It shows all the tickets that have been approved. From here you can download approved tickets to your computer, allowing you to choose to download only the new tickets in the database or all of them.
  4. User Avatar. In the top right hand corner you will see your avatar. Clicking on your avatar will let you view your settings or sign out.
  5. Review Section. which is divided into four categories: New, Held, Approved, and rejected. From here you can start reviewing tickets.

Waterbear QA tool dashboard for ticket review

  1. Newest ticket
  2. Review Button. Allows you to start reviewing the most recent ticket.
  3. New. This tab shows a list of all the new tickets in the system. These tickets have not been opened or reviewed.
  4. Held. This tab shows a list of the tickets that have been opened and the review process has begun, but the ticket needs more work or needs to be reviewed by an additional person.
  5. Approved. This tab shows a list of the tickets which have been approved. These tickets meet all the requirements to investigate the issue and have been sent to the database for export.
  6. Rejected. This tab shows a list of the tickets which have been rejected. These tickets did not meet the criteria or are considered spam.
  7. List of all tickets available organized by ticket number and date.

Review Process

To review a ticket click on one from the list. It will open and you can begin reviewing. You can make the following changes or updates on a ticket:

  • Edit the description.
  • Disable categories from being sent to the database.
  • Removing PII ( Public Identifiable Information ).
  • Add or delete tags.
  • Add more information to specific categories.

  1. Editing the Description (What was seen or heard?)

    To edit the description of a ticket click inside the box and begin editing.

    If you want to see the original description of the ticket click on “show original.” The original description will be shown below the line in italics. If you want to change the description back to the original, click “revert.”

    Clicking “done” will keep your edits/changes to the description and you will be back in review mode.

Waterbear QA tool edit description

Waterbear QA tool edit description

  1. Disabling Categories

    The toggle on the right hand side of the category controls what is sent to the database and what isn’t.

    Toggled ON (Category and information IS sent to the database):

    Waterbear QA tool toggle on

    Toggled OFF (Category and information is NOT sent to the database):

    Waterbear QA tool toggle off

    To disable categories from being sent to the database, toggle ‘off’ the section you wish to disable. During the preview (second step) you should see the disabled section as a watermark which means it won’t be sent to the database.

    Waterbear QA tool links

  2. Removing PII

    You can remove personally identifiable information (PII) by disabling access to a website, deleting text typed by the submitter or blurring parts of an attached image(s).

    Removing PII from Images

    To blur images, hover over the image and tap on the ‘Edit’ button that appears.

    Waterbear QA tool remove PII

    This will open a window in which you can place dark rectangles over PII, or sensitive information in the image. This allows you to keep the relevant part of the image while protecting any sensitive content or PII.

    Waterbear QA tool redact image

    You can add multiple masks to any image.

    You can undo all your masking by clicking the circular arrow icon.

    You can also undo the last thing you did using the back-arrow icon.

    Redo one step with the forward-arrow icon.

    Use the ALL icon to delete all changes at once.

    You can exit editing mode by tapping on the ‘X’ in the upper right corner.

    When you have masked all that you want to, click “save.”

    When you click “Save,” you will return back to the full ticket view and you will be back in review mode.

  3. Adding or Deleting Tags

    Tags are applied in CDR Link. Tickets are tagged according to what the submission is about or related to, and they help to identify, search and categorize tickets. The tags on each ticket are their “Original” tags.

    To add more tags to a ticket click on the one you want. It will show a filled in color, meaning it is selected or added to the ticket.

    To delete tags, click on

    • Revert. Click on ‘Revert’ if you want to leave the tags as they were originally.
    • Done. Click on ‘Done’ to save changes.
    • Show Original. The ‘Show Original’ button allows you to see the original tags after you made changes.

  4. Add more information

    You can add more information to the following categories.

    • Description. You can change or modify the title of the ticket.
    • Links. You can add new links or modify the original ones. You can also toggle off or disable this category, to prevent links from being sent to the database.
    • Have advanced information about the account in question? Use this section to type additional information.

Approving Tickets

Once you are done reviewing the ticket you can mark it as “Rejected”, put it on “Hold” or “Approve” it.

  • Selecting Reject means that the ticket didn’t meet the requirements to be investigated. Rejecting the ticket will place the ticket in the “reject” tab on your homescreen. You can retrieve it (reopen it for review) from here at any time.
  • Selecting Hold means If you place a ticket on “hold” it will be in the ‘Held” tab on your homescreen. You can retrieve it (reopen it for review) from here at any time.
  • Selecting Approve means you have finished the review process and are ready for this ticket to go to the database.

If you select Approve you will be taken to a new screen, which shows you a preview of the ticket with all the updates and changes applied. This is your final check before sending it to the database. If you need to make more changes tap “back to review” at the bottom of the page.

If you are finished reviewing and ready to send the ticket to the database, check the box under “Everything look right?” question and click on Approve.

Upon clicking Approve you will be taken back to the homescreen of the QA Tool.

Exporting Data

The QA Tool allows you to download approved tickets to your device for further analysis. The data is easily usable with data analysis tools, like Tableau.

You can choose between downloading all the approved tickets in the database or only the ones that were approved after your last download. Tickets will download in a .zip file which will be located in your ‘Downloads’ folder by default. The file will contain a CSV file including ticket data and media.

Waterbear QA tool export data

  1. Export. Click here to access the data ready for downloading.
  2. Total tickets. The total number of tickets currently in the database and ready for download.
  3. New since your last download. The number of tickets in the database, ready for download since your last download.
  4. Last download. The date tickets were downloaded for the last time from that account.
  5. Download all. Click here to download all tickets in the database ready for download.
  6. Download new. Only download tickets that were approved after the date of the last download.