Your Workspace Is Sponsored by a Consultant: What That Means

If a consultancy set this workspace up for you, it's sponsored: it runs on their licence and nothing is billed to you. A line at the top of every admin page says who pays for it; this page answers the questions that usually follow.

#Who owns the workspace

Yours. The consultant created it and pays for it, but the workspace, the surveys and the results belong to your company, and at least one person here is an owner with full control. That isn't a courtesy: surveys can't be published here at all until somebody on your side is an owner, precisely so you're never in a position of having paid for results you can't reach.

#Who holds the workspace key

The workspace key was created in the consultant's browser when they set the workspace up, so they held it first. When they invite an owner from your side, your owner asks for the key in the app and reads the consultant a code by phone or in person; the consultant types it in, and their browser shares the key with your owner. An owner can restore a colleague's access only after confirming a code with them directly; we can't do it for them. Until that happens, your owner's row under Admin → Users says "No key yet": they can open the workspace, but results stay sealed to them.

Once your owner has the key, they can restore it the same way for other people on your side, and your access no longer depends on the consultant.

#What the consultant can see

The same results you can. Scores and choices come back as totals. Written answers are shown word for word, shuffled and undated. Where the poll allows it, anyone who'd rather not be read can send just the topics they pick instead. Nothing shows until at least the poll's minimum group size has answered (never fewer than three). While a poll is open, the first results wait for three more answers on top of that, and new answers then arrive in random groups of three to five, so no change anyone sees can be pinned on one person. A few answers are always held in reserve until the poll closes, so no one's answer can be picked out. Nobody, including the consultant and including us, can tell which answers are whose.

Answers are encrypted in each respondent's browser before they're sent, so what reaches our servers is ciphertext. Results are decrypted in the browser of someone who holds the workspace key. The consultant can read them because they hold that key; your owner can too.

#What's included, and what isn't

Poll counts, recipient counts and seats come from the consultant's licence, and paid features such as sending invitations work while the licence is active.

AI poll building and question rewrites come from the consultant's licence too, with their own monthly ceiling. One thing is different from a workspace with its own subscription:

Business compliance features aren't included. Single sign-on, verified domains and similar controls stay your own IT decision, and come with a Business subscription of your own.

#Ending the consultant's access

Yes, while the workspace is sponsored. Go to Admin → Users. The Engagement access card lists everyone who can open the workspace and labels where their access came from, with the consultant's people marked Consultant. Any owner here can click End access on them. It's also deliberately invisible to your identity provider: if you use directory sync, it will never add or remove a consultant, so nobody gets removed by an automated process in the middle of an engagement, and nobody gets quietly added by one either.

Ending access revokes their membership and deletes their stored copy of the key. It can't reach into a browser where somebody already unlocked it, which is true of removing any collaborator from any system that encrypts on the client.

If you plan to take over billing and also want the consultant's access ended, end it first: the Engagement access card only shows while the workspace is sponsored.

#What your employees see

While the workspace is sponsored, the survey page names the consultancy on behalf of your company, above the questions, with both logos. We don't allow a consultant to run a survey under their brand alone: your people should be able to tell who is asking and who is running it. The page also explains, in plain language, what is and isn't collected.

#Taking over the subscription

Take over the subscription whenever you like, during the engagement or after it. An owner from your side opens Subscription, chooses Take over billing, then picks a plan.

Nothing moves. Same workspace, same address, same surveys, same results, same people. The consultant's access continues after the handover.

#If the consultant's licence lapses

Your data isn't deleted and you can still sign in. Paid features stop until this workspace has a subscription of its own, which you can start from the same page without asking them.