Conducting assessment surveys

Connect a questionnaire from the Results app to an assessment in the Projects app to conduct self-assessments with control owners for SOX testing, control certifications, or risk assessments, and have the responses easily accessible when you execute procedures, or perform walkthroughs and tests.

What is an assessment survey?

An assessment survey is a questionnaire from the Results app that has been connected to an assessment in the Projects app.

Assessment surveys are used to aggregate questionnaire responses from the Results app, so that they can be easily accessible when you execute procedures, or perform walkthroughs and tests.

Before you start

Before you can conduct an assessment survey, you need to define objectives and controls in within a project in the Projects app.

You also need to set up data containers in the Results app (collection, analysis, and table), and create a questionnaire. The table (survey) in the Results app is used to store questionnaire responses.

How it works

You connect a questionnaire from the Results app to an assessment in the Projects app. Assessments include:

  • Execute Procedures
  • Walkthroughs
  • Tests

Once you connect the questionnaire to the assessment, you can send the questionnaire from the Projects app and begin tracking responses in the Projects app.

If you remove an assessment, you can no longer view the overall status of the assessment in the Projects app. Questionnaire responses in the Results app are not deleted when you remove an assessment.

Contextual data captured in Results

The following Projects app fields are captured as contextual data in the table in the Results app:

Note

You must configure the questionnaire in the Results app to Show all record fields or Show select record fields to display these fields to questionnaire respondents. For more information, see Creating questionnaires.

Project fields Objective fields Control fields
  • Project ID
  • Project Title
  • Reference ID (based on Objective Reference and Control ID)
  • Objective ID
  • Objective Title
  • Control Title
  • Control Description
  • Control ID

Example

Conducting self-assessments with control owners

Scenario

To comply with SOX requirements, you need to conduct a series of self-assessments with individual control owners in order to validate the operating effectiveness of internal controls.

You plan to send a questionnaire to control owners and aggregate responses for reference when you go to test controls.

Process

Within your project, you click the Fieldwork tab. You then click Create an assessment for... and select the testing round that applies to the self-assessment. Finally, you select the questionnaire you intend to send to individual control owners and the applicable controls, and you specify the individual control owners.

Questionnaire selection

Control selection and control owner specification

Result

The control self-assessment is sent to the specified control owners. The individual control owners fill out the questionnaire, and responses are aggregated under Saved Assessments.

Permissions

To create an assessment survey, you must have access to the appropriate project in the Projects app and collection in the Results app.

Steps

Note

  • Interface terms are customizable, and fields and tabs are configurable. In your instance of Diligent One, some terms, fields, and tabs may be different.
  • If a required field is left blank, you will see a warning message: This field is required. Some custom fields may have default values.

Connect the questionnaire to an assessment

  1. From the Launchpad home page (www.highbond.com), select the Projects app to open it.

    If you are already in Diligent One, you can use the left-hand navigation menu to switch to the Projects app.

    The Projects home page opens.

  2. Open a project.

    The project dashboard opens.

  3. Click the Fieldwork tab.
  4. Select Create an assessment for... and select the appropriate option.

    The dropdown list is dynamically generated based on the number of testing rounds in the project.

    Note

    Each assessment can only be associated with a single Execute Procedure, Walkthrough, or Testing Round.

  5. In the Assessment Survey window, choose the Results survey you want to send:
    Note

    You cannot select a Results survey from an archived collection.

    1. Select the All Collections dropdown list to filter results from a specific Collection in the Results app.
    2. Optional. Click view beside the appropriate survey to view the survey in the Results app.
    3. Click the radio button next to the appropriate survey and click Next >.
  6. Select the controls to associate with the assessment:
    • To search for a specific control, enter a keyword in the search box.
    • To select all controls under a single objective, select the checkbox next to the appropriate objective.
    • To select specific controls under a single objective, select the checkbox next to the appropriate controls.
    • To select all controls under all objectives, click Select All.
    • To remove any of your selections, click None.
      Tip

      You can mark some controls for self-assessment and test other manually. Some auditors send self-assessments for non-key controls and manually test key controls (or controls associated with the highest risk).

  7. Specify the owner of each control by doing one of the following:
    8. Option Steps
    Specify different owners for each control
    1. Beside each control, enter the name or email address of the owner, or click edit to update an existing owner.

      2. Note

      Diligent One Platform does not support email addresses with accents or non-Latin characters.

    2. Click the checkmark to confirm changes or to cancel.

      The owner of the control is specified.
    Specify the same owner for all controls under an objective
    1. In the Name/Email for all Controls field beside each objective, enter the name or email address of the owner, or click edit to update an existing owner for all controls under the objective.

      2. Note

      Diligent One Platform does not support email addresses with accents or non-Latin characters.

    2. Click the checkmark to confirm changes or to cancel.

      All controls under the objective are populated with the same owner name.
    Note

    Both licensed and non-licensed users can be specified as owners. Specifying an owner does not automatically assign the person as an Owner in the Projects app. For information on assigning owners, see Defining risks and controls.

Send the questionnaire

Do one of the following:

  • To send the questionnaire immediately, click Send Now and then click Send Now.

    You must select at least one control and specify a control owner for each control in order to send the survey. If the same Owner exists for multiple selected controls, a single email is sent to the recipient with a link to the survey.

  • To send the questionnaire at a later time, click Resume Later.

    The assessment is stored under Saved Assessments. Assessments that have not been sent display beside the status Not Sent. For assessments that have been sent, the total number of responses out of the total number of controls displays.

Track responses

  1. Within the project, click the Fieldwork tab.

    The Objective List displays and saved assessments display in the right panel. Assessments are named based on their association to an Execute Procedure, a Walkthrough, or a Test. If there is more than one assessment of a particular type, the names are sequentially ordered (for example, Walkthrough Assessment, Walkthrough Assessment 1, Walkthrough Assessment 2, etc.)

  2. Under Saved Assessments, click the appropriate assessment.

    The Assessment Status window opens, displaying a list of controls, control owners, and which control owners have responded to the survey.

  3. Do any of the following:

    • To update the owner of a control, click edit.
    • To view the survey results in the Results app, click the link beside Survey Results.
    • To view a response in the Projects app, click the appropriate control link.

      The Assessment Results side panel opens and displays the responses to the survey within the context of the assessment.

Troubleshooting

Understand common assessment survey errors and causes and learn how to fix errors.

Error message / problem Cause Solution(s)

User is not available for selection from the Owner field

OR

The owner is displayed beside the control. However, you are unable to select the same owner for additional controls.
  • The user has been removed from Launchpad, or their assigned subscription does not entitle them to access the Projects app.

    Users removed from Launchpad do not receive a survey and are only displayed as owners for controls they were assigned prior to being removed from the Diligent One instance.

  • The person previously assigned owner has had their access removed from the project in the Projects app.

 
  • Add the user in Launchpad.
  • Update an existing user's subscription.
  • Reinstate a person's access to a project.
  • Unsuspend the user in the Projects app.
"We were unable to save your selection because one or more of the selected controls no longer exists. Please try again."
  • The control was removed from the Projects app.
  • The objective that contains the control was removed from the Projects app
Re-create the objective or control in the Projects app.
"The survey you previously selected was removed. Please select a new survey."
  • The survey was removed from the Results app.
  • The Collection that contains the survey was removed from the Results app.
 Re-create the survey or collection in the Results app.
The assessment survey is no longer available.
  • A user deleted the assessment survey from the Projects app.
 Re-create the assessment survey.
The assessment survey could not be sent or the assessment survey is disabled. The Results collection (where the questionnaire is stored) has been archived. Unarchive the Results collection and re-send the assessment survey from the Projects app.