Visitor Q&A moves the diligence Q&A out of your inbox and into the data room. Reviewers post questions from inside the room, your team answers in one place, and every question and answer is scoped to the question team that asked. No more chasing threads across email, no more forwarding the same answer to five different bidders.

This is the room-level Q&A module where outside reviewers ask your deal team questions. It is distinct from AI document Q&A — the AI that reads your files and answers on the spot. This page covers the module where humans ask humans; for the AI chat, see AI Q&A.

What It Is

When Visitor Q&A is on, invited reviewers get a Q&A tab in the data room. From there they open the New question button on the room's Q&A tab, type a question, and submit it. The question lands in your team's Q&A workspace, where an admin drafts and publishes the answer back to the reviewer.

It replaces the fundraising and M&A back-and-forth that most deals still run over email:

Fundraising. An investor reads the deck, asks about churn or the cap table, and gets the answer in the room where the numbers already live.
M&A diligence. Bidders ask about a contract clause or a customer concentration figure; your team answers once, and the record stays attached to the deal.
Board and LP reviews. Reviewers ask in context instead of firing off a separate email chain.

Plan Availability

Visitor Q&A Data Room+ — on Data Room it's basic: questions and vetted answers, without the expert/approver workflow.
Private, threaded Q&A with assign-an-expert and approve-before-release routing Deal Team+

Prices and the Deal Team admin minimum are on Plans and Pricing.

How to Turn It On

Open the data room and go to the Settings tab in the sidebar. Find the Visitor Q&A card — "Let visitors ask questions inside the room so review keeps moving without extra email threads" — and turn it on.

Note there are two Settings surfaces in Peony and this is the one that matters here: the per-data-room Settings tab (inside the room, next to Documents, Analytics, Audit trail, Q&A, and Permissions), not your workspace settings in the bottom-left of the home screen. Turning on the card here adds the Q&A tab to that room for reviewers who have access.

Configure Q&A

Once the card is on, open the Q&A tab in the room's sidebar and click Configure Q&A at the top right. Setup has two steps: Workflow, then Users.

Step 1: Choose a workflow

Pick how a question travels from the person who asks it to the answer.

Basic Q&A flow has two roles. The Question submitter sends a question to the answer side, and the Answer coordinator answers every incoming question.

Advanced Q&A flow has five steps, for deals where an answer needs a specialist and a sign-off:

Question submitter
Answer coordinator
Expert
Answer coordinator review
Answer approver

The Question submitter sends a question to the answer side.
The Answer coordinator reviews it and assigns it to an expert.
The Expert drafts an answer for the coordinator to review.
The coordinator reviews the draft and sends it for final approval.
The Answer approver approves the final answer and shares it with the question submitter.

The Advanced flow is Deal Team+ — see Advanced Q&A Workflow.

Click Next to move on to Users.

Step 2: Set up question teams and the answer side

The Users step has two columns.

Question side. Click Add question team to create a team — for example, one per investor — then use Assign members to add people to it, such as the visitor groups you set up under Permissions.
Answer side. Assign members to each role in your workflow. Answer coordinators receive new questions and manage the response. Experts help draft answers when specialist input is needed. Approvers sign off before an answer goes out (Advanced flow).

Click Done to save.

Question Teams Keep Each Investor's Questions Separate

The question team is the privacy boundary in Visitor Q&A, so decide how to split your teams before you invite anyone.

Same question team: members see each other's questions. Everyone in a question team can see every question their teammates have asked. A buyer's deal lead, lawyers and accountants work from one shared list instead of asking the same thing twice.
Different question teams: no visibility across teams. People in one question team can't see the questions another team has asked. Each team sees only the questions asked inside its own team.

This is how you keep different investors' questions apart. In the example above, Investor A and Investor B are separate question teams: Investor A sees only Investor A's questions, and Investor B sees only Investor B's. Neither learns what the other is asking — which parts of the business it is worried about, or how far along its diligence is. Groups placed in the same question team will see each other's questions, so give every competing bidder or investor its own team.

Your answer side sees everything. The Q&A workspace lists every question with the Question Team it came from, and you can filter by team in the left panel.

Answering Questions

Posted questions arrive in your team's Q&A workspace, reachable from the Q&A tab in the data room sidebar. From there an admin drafts the answer and publishes it back to the reviewer who asked. Reviewers see only the published answer.

You don't have to keep the tab open to notice a question. Each new one sends an email, A new Q&A question needs attention in your room, with the room name, who asked, the question itself, and a Review question button that opens it in the Q&A workspace.

Answers can also be published to every question team at once when a question is process-wide — answer it once and broadcast it, FAQ-style, without revealing which team asked. Cross-team privacy still holds: the other teams see only the published answer, never the asking team's identity or its other questions.

Admins can delete questions — useful for clearing out test questions before a room goes live. Open the question in the Q&A workspace and use the delete control.

Who can answer: everyone managing the room needs a paid admin seat, but you can bring in free team members to answer or sign off on questions assigned to them. Create those people as a group under Permissions, and a paid admin can assign questions to them. Investors and outside reviewers answering on their own side never need a Peony account.

Advanced Q&A Workflow (Deal Team)

On Deal Team, Visitor Q&A becomes a private, routed workflow built for live M&A and fundraising. Each incoming question can be assigned to an expert to draft the answer and an approver to sign off before anything reaches the reviewer. The answer stays private until the approver publishes it — the "CFO-in-the-loop" flow that keeps a wrong number from ever leaving the building. On the plan comparison this is the Advanced Q&A module.

One setup note: the Advanced Q&A workflow must be assigned to the data room root link, not a sub-link. If you see "Selected link assignment must use the data room root link.", reassign it to the root link and the error clears.

To set it up, choose Advanced Q&A flow in Step 1 of Configure Q&A and assign Experts and Approvers in Step 2.

Common Questions

The Q&A button isn't showing in the room even though Q&A is "allowed." How do I enable it?

Open the data room Settings tab and confirm the Visitor Q&A card is on (Data Room plan and above). Once it's on, reviewers get a Q&A tab, and the entry point to post is the New question button on that Q&A tab. Questions they post land in your team's Q&A workspace.

Can reviewers in different question teams see each other's questions?

No. Each question team sees only the questions asked inside that team. Give every investor or bidder its own question team and none of them can see what the others are asking.

Can people in the same question team see each other's questions?

Yes. Everyone in a question team sees all of that team's questions. If two groups shouldn't see each other's questions, put them in separate question teams under Configure Q&A → Users.

How do I delete our test questions?

Open the Q&A workspace and use the delete control on the question. Admins can remove any question — handy for clearing test entries before you invite real reviewers.

Can I keep answers private until we approve them?

Yes, on Deal Team. Private, threaded Q&A lets you assign a question to an expert to draft the answer and to an approver to sign off; nothing reaches the reviewer until the approver publishes it. On Data Room, Visitor Q&A is basic — questions and vetted answers, without the expert/approver routing.

Do the people answering questions need paid admin seats?

Everyone managing the room needs a paid admin seat. Free general team members can answer or sign off on questions a paid admin assigns to them — create them as a group under Permissions first. Investors and outside reviewers answering on their own side need no account.

Reviewers saw two places to ask a question — which is the real one?

The main flow is the New question button on the room's Q&A tab. Earlier rooms occasionally surfaced a second "email me directly" button; that extra surface has been removed so there is a single, consistent way for reviewers to ask.

Visitor Q&A: Investor Questions Inside the Room