Redact an analysis

Introduction

Psychological safety is essential for fostering collaboration, innovation, and trust. However, managing sensitive language within feedback can be challenging. The MLY AI-powered redaction solution helps you maintain a safe environment by detecting and redacting inappropriate, sensitive, or harmful language in feedback—without losing critical insights.

The Redaction feature offers multiple workflows to redact your analysis:

• Keyword replacement – Substitute problematic words while keeping the original message context.
• Hide & preserve insights – Fully hide offensive comments but retain key insights for decision-makers.
• Complete removal – Eliminate harmful comments for sensitive audiences and remove insights altogether.

These workflows can be used to adjust the content of the analysis for review by different roles such as:

Adaptive redactions for instructors or managers:

• Hide offensive language, but ensure insights remain available in shared analyses.
• Maintain a respectful, actionable reporting process.

Full visibility for leaders:

• Heads of departments can see full details, including flagged comments, for deeper context.

In addition, a Redaction request feature is available to enable users to propose redactions while viewing a shared analysis. Requests are managed through a dedicated redaction request page, with sorting, filtering, and bulk action capabilities and Approved, Rejected follow-up actions to process the requests.

Learn more about how MLY empowers a feedback culture of psychological safety and wellbeing.

Create a redaction list

The table below outlines the access levels for each user role regarding the creation of redaction lists:

1. Select the Redaction icon on the main menubar to access the Redaction list page.
2. Click on Create redaction list to start.
3. If no lists have been created, this screen will be empty.

4. Enter a Redaction list name for this list.
5. Enter a Redaction list type:

• If you are an Administrator and wish to provide access to all users to share this redaction list, select Global. This option is only available to Administrators and hidden from the screen for other users.
• Select Personal and the redaction list will only be available to you.

6. In the left panel, Enter terms to redact individually and click Enter or Tab on your keyboard to save each term. You can also copy a list of terms from Excel or Word using Control C and paste it into the Terms to redact panel using Control V. To remove terms from your list, click on the x sign beside each word you wish to delete. Terms cannot be edited, instead delete the term and enter a new one. Each term has a maximum of 100 characters.
7. To Include all variations of terms above, click on the checkbox.
8. To include Related suggestions from text, click on Look for similar terms. Click on the + sign beside each word you wish to add to your list or click +Select all suggestions.

9. Clear all above the left and right panels will clear all the terms in the respective panels.
10. Click to Save changes.
11. Click to Discard changes.

Manage redaction lists

The table below outlines the access levels for each user role regarding the management and editing of redaction lists:

1. Use the search bar to find matches for the Redaction list Name or Type in their respective columns especially when managing a large number of lists. You can click on the header of each column to sort it in descending or ascending order. Also note that global redaction lists created by the admin are available to analyst users.
2. To access a specific redaction list, click on the three-dot menu icon which is displayed when hovering over that list.
3. Click Edit redaction to make changes.
4. Click Delete to delete that list. The user cannot delete a redaction list if it is being used in an analysis.

Create global redaction rule sets

The table below outlines the access levels for each user role regarding the creation of global redaction rule sets:

Global redaction rule sets is a feature available only to Admins, allowing them to create a set of redaction rules that are available system-wide. The purpose of a global redaction rule set is to group together multiple redaction lists and display methods to apply to a single shared analysis.

For example, when sharing an analysis with faculty, you may want to hide or delete Alerts in the 80 - 100 % range, and partially or completely hide profanity, abusive or inappropriate language, and sensitive information which correspond to multiple redaction lists.

To create a Global redaction rule set:

1. Select the **Redaction rule sets ** option from the Redaction feature drop-down menu on the Homepage menubar.
2. If no global redaction rule sets have been created, this icon will be displayed.
3. Click Create global redaction rule set.

4. In the Redaction rule set name field, enter a name for your rule set.
5. To create your rule set, select which redaction lists will be applied to an analysis and specify if you want to include an Alert score range. Click on the down-arrow of the Select item field to view a drop-down menu of your redaction lists and the Alert score range. Add more redaction lists by clicking on Add additional item. By default, the Replace redacted terms with field contains the term Redacted. This is a editable field and can be changed to another word or phrase if needed.

• 5a. Alert score range: Set the range of alerts which will be hidden or removed from the analysis.
• 5b. Redaction list: Select one or multiple redaction lists and choose the display method for each list (Partial - hides single word or a phrase or Hide comment - hides entire comment) for each list that will be applied to the analysis.

6. To enable users to manually redact comments when this Redaction rule set is applied to a shared analysis, select the checkbox Include manual comment redaction in this version.
7. Click Save

Add redaction to an analysis

1. Open your analysis and select Analysis properties on the Overview screen.
2. In the Redaction section, click Create redaction version.

Configure redaction for sharing an analysis

Redaction rule set

• Go to the Redaction settings tab to apply redactions to the analysis.
• From the Redaction rule set drop-down menu, select a rule set for this shared analysis.
• Add custom conditions to the rule set (e.g., instructors only see courses they taught).

Manual redaction approval

• Enables the approval process for all user redactions in the share setup.

Manual redaction period

• Set the Manual redaction period Start date and End date using the calendar.
  • The End date can be left open to keep the manual redaction period active indefinitely.
• The Start date and End date can also be set relative to demographic conditions (e.g., 0 days after survey submission or 10 days before the end of semester).

Finalize sharing

• Select Notify users by email to send email notifications for this shared analysis.
• Back to user selection returns to the start of the share process.
• Preview who and what the user will see.
• Share saves the settings and complete the sharing process.

Manual redaction settings

Analysis redaction settings

Manual Redaction at the Analysis Level centralizes control of comment redaction within an analysis. Instead of relying on rule-based configurations, it allows the analysis owner to decide whether manual redaction is permitted and what specific redaction actions users can perform. This ensures predictable permissions and simplifies user experience by clearly defining who can redact and under what conditions.

If no manual redaction options are selected, the user will not have access to the manual redaction feature even when the analysis is shared with them.

Rule set management

Redaction lists can be updated at any time. To ensure rule sets remain current, the Rule Set Management screen displays their synchronization status. If any redaction list within a rule set changes, its status updates to Sync, indicating that synchronization is required. This ensures all rule sets stay up to date.

Manage redaction requests

Role-based access and management of Redaction requests

Users with an Analyst or Guest role can request redactions while viewing a shared analysis if they have been granted one of the following permissions during the share setup: Allow user to redact comments with approval or Allow user to redact comments.

The Owner of the analysis and Admin users can directly redact comments without needing to submit a redaction request.

The table below outlines the access levels for each user role regarding redaction requests:

Permission Descriptions

Review redaction requests

All Redaction requests sent by users can be reviewed by Admins and the Analysis author (owner).

• The Admin can view and select the All redaction requests list from the Redaction request page drop-down menu. The All redaction requests menu option is not visible to Analysts and Guest.
• Analysts and Guest can view and select My redaction requests list and based on their permissions, they can Redact the comment, and/or select to Hide comment but keep insights or Remove the comment.

1. Select the Redaction icon on the main menubar to access the Redaction requests page.
2. If no requests have been created, this icon will be displayed. If requests are pending, the icon will display a red dot.

3. On the redaction request page, the user can search the redaction list by entering the name of the user who submitted the request or the text of the comment. The default sort order displays the most recent request at the top. Users can sort any of the columns in ascending or descending order or filter by status.
4. The number of requests is displayed beside the search bar.
5. Up to 30 requests are displayed per page. To view more, click the next page number to advance.
6. To open a redaction request, click the 3 dots icon just left of the item in the table and select View request.
7. Click on Edit to modify the redacted comment.
8. Click either Approve or Reject to complete the process. The status of the comment will display Pending until it is either approved or rejected.
9. Next and Previous buttons are available to easily navigate through the list.

Redaction requests for the same comment are also displayed together and can all be processed in the pop-up window. Once 1 request is approved, the system will display an option to Reject the others. The user can also Reject all requests.

If additional request(s) arrive for the same comment, the user can access the request again where all the new requests are displayed as Pending.

The previous status can be overridden. The last redaction for the comments will always take precedent when comments are redacted multiple time or multiple users are redacting the comments.

Archive redaction requests

The table below outlines the access levels for each user role regarding archived redaction requests:

The user can access archived requests by clicking on the Redaction requests dropdown and selecting Archived redactions in the redaction list page.

The Archive redaction is not displayed for the redaction requested displayed in the archived list.

The columns in the Archive redaction list are the same as Review requests page.

The Archived redaction page is only available for users with analyst and admin roles.

Export an analysis containing redacted comments

When exporting data from the Comments Explorer, the redacted comments are exported exactly as they appear in the analysis.

• If a comment is partially redacted or hidden, it will be exported displaying Redacted hiding the redacted portion.
• If a comment is removed due to redaction, it will not be included in the export file.

To export an analysis:

1. Go to the Comment explorer.
2. Click on Export comment analysis.
3. The comments with partial redaction will display [Redacted} for specific words or phrases that have been hidden.
4. The comments that have been Hidden keeping the insights, Redacted will hide the entire comments.
5. The comments that have been Removed, will not appear in the exported analysis data.

Comment explorer list of comments with details

Exported comments file with details