Initiate an Assessment Batch

To initiate an assessment batch, you select an assessment plan and set other general details; potentially attach documents and associate perspective values; select processes, risks, or controls to be assessed; and secure the assessment.

Securing the assessment involves designating owners, editors, and viewers of the assessment batch as a whole, and separately designating assessors, reviewers, and approvers of the individual assessments.

Use either of two methods to start the initiation process:

Select the Initiate Assessment Batch quick action from the Risk Management springboard. (Depending on the number of quick actions available to you, you may need to select a Show More option on the springboard.)
Navigate to the Risk Management > Assessments > Assessment Batches page. Then, select Actions > Initiate Assessment Batch.

An Assessment Batch Scoping page opens, with a General region active.

Provide General Information

In the General region, name and describe the assessment batch, select an assessment plan, and set a due date. The start date defaults to the current date, and you can't change it.

Also, select an Allow Users to Create Issues option if you want assessors to be able to create issues as they complete assessments. Clear the option to prevent them from creating issues.

When you finish entering values, select Save and Continue. Although the batch isn't yet fully initiated, your having saved it means that a record of the batch appears in the Worklists page of the Assessments work area.

Note: You'll be prompted to select Save and Continue multiple times during the initiation process. At any of these moments, you can select Save and Close instead. If so, you can reopen the batch later to continue its initiation.

Attach Documents

When you finish working in the General region, an Attachments region becomes active. An attachment may be a file (such as a text file or spreadsheet) or a website that documents the assessment or provides supporting information for it.

You aren't required to attach documents to the assessment batch. If you choose to, however, you may simply drag a file into the attachments area. Otherwise:

Click the link in the Attachments area.
Click Add Link or Add File.
Depending on your selection:
- Type, or copy and paste, a URL into an Add Link dialog box. Then select OK.
- In a file-upload dialog, navigate to and select the file you want. Then select Open. (The title of the dialog, and the name of the option you select to complete the attachment, may depend on the web browser you use.)

Regardless of whether you attach documents, click Save and Continue to advance to the next step.

Select Criteria

A Criteria Selection region becomes active.

Under Assessment Activities, review settings that you can't change. These include the primary object type and the assessment activity inherited from the assessment plan you selected. If the batch applies to process or control assessment, you can also review the in-scope value determined by the assessment activity. Process or control records are eligible for inclusion in the batch only if they're assigned the in-scope value shown here.
Also in the Assessment Activities region, you can determine whether assessments in the batch include a survey for assessors to complete. If the assessment plan specifies a survey template, its name appears by default in a Survey Template field. If not, the field is blank. You can select a survey template if the field is blank, modify an existing selection (even one inherited from the assessment plan), or remove an existing selection so that no survey applies to the batch.
When the Survey Template field specifies a survey to be completed:
- A Survey Name Prefix field becomes active and required. Enter a unique value; it's added to the name of the survey to associate survey results with the assessments you're initiating. If no survey template is selected, the Survey Name Prefix field is inactive.
- Use an Assessors Are Required to Complete Survey check box to determine whether survey responses are required. If the batch inherits a template from the plan, the check box is selected by default. In any case, however, you can select or clear the check box. If no survey template is selected, the check box is inactive.
Under Selection Criteria and Control Stratification, you can filter the set of objects available for assessment. Initially, the criteria in force are those established by the plan you selected. You can accept those criteria (make no changes). Or you can add or remove criteria. Set selection criteria here in the same way you would while creating an assessment plan.

Click Save and Continue to advance to the next step.

Select Perspectives

A Perspective Selection region becomes active. It inherits the settings selected for the plan you chose in the General region. You can accept the plan values (make no changes). Or you can modify them in any of these ways:

Select the No Perspectives check box to rescind any perspective selections made for the plan. The batch would include only records of its primary object that are assigned no perspective values.
Add perspective values to, or remove them from, values inherited from the plan. This would narrow or broaden the selection of object records available for assessment. You can choose only among perspective hierarchies mapped to the type of object you're assessing (Process, Risk, or Control).
If you've selected perspective values, modify the setting of the Include Duplicate Records check box. Select it to generate multiple assessment records for each instance of the primary object, one for each perspective value it's assigned. Or clear it to generate only one assessment record for each primary object instance.

Click Save and Continue to advance to the next step.

Select Items to Assess

A Proposed Records to Be Assessed region becomes active. It lists records of the primary object made available by the plan you selected in the General region and values you set in the Criteria Selection and Perspective Selection regions. Ensure that a checkbox is selected for each item you want to include in the assessment batch, and cleared for each item you want to exclude.

This region displays three record counts. A total record count is the number of records returned by your search criteria. An included records count is the number of records you've selected for the batch. An excluded records count is the number you haven't selected. Click on any of these to view the records it applies to. You can actually select or clear records only from the total-record-count view.

Click Save and Continue to advance to the next step.

Secure the Batch

A Batch Assessment Security Assignment region becomes active, with you selected as owner. You may select and authorize other users as owners, editors, or viewers. The access you're defining applies to the batch as a whole, not to the individual assessments generated by the batch. Users you select here can view the initiation details and all assessment records.

Click Save and Define Assessment Record Security. Once you do, most assessment criteria you've defined so far are locked. You can return to prior pages to review these criteria, and if you're an owner, you can change the due date or the batch security. If you're an editor, you can change the due date only. Other batch-level criteria are available for viewing only.

Secure Individual Assessments within the Batch

An Assessment Records Security Assignment page becomes active. Use it to assign assessors, reviewers, approvers, and viewers to each of the records you've selected for assessment.

Select User to appoint individual people in these capacities, or select Group to appoint user groups. (You create groups in the Risk Management Data Security work area.)
In each of the Assessor, Reviewer, Viewer, and Approver list boxes, select an individual or a group to serve in these capacities. Every assessment requires an assessor; the other values are optional.
In a list of records you've selected for assessment, click the check box for each item to be worked on by the users or groups you selected in step 2. Note that the assessment-batch owner is selected by default as a viewer.

As you select among the records, you can filter them either by name or by the values of perspectives you've selected for the batch. You can also sort the list of records alphabetically or select among values in the Sort field to view records for which assessors, reviewers, approvers, or viewers haven't been defined. However, you can use only one filtering parameter at a time.
Click Apply.
Repeat the procedure until all items have at least one assessor and, if you want, reviewer, approver, and viewer.

You can select more than one person (or group) in each capacity. Click the check box for one or more assessments for which you've already selected users. Make new selections in the Assessor, Reviewer, Approver, or Viewer fields, and click Apply. The originally selected values remain, and the new values are added to them.

Before the batch is fully initiated, you can also rescind selections. Click the check box for one or more assessments, then click Remove. All values are removed from the Assessor, Reviewer, and Approver fields for these assessments, and you must then select new values. After the batch is fully initiated, you can add new users to its assessments, but you can't remove any.

Control owners may have selected assessors, reviewers, approvers, and viewers while editing their controls. If you include any of these controls as you initiate a certification-assessment batch, the record for each in the Assessment Records Security Assignment page automatically displays the assessment actors its owner selected. You can accept those actors, add others to them, or remove and replace them. This applies only to control certification assessments.

When you finish selecting people to work on individual assessments, click the Initiate button. At this point, the batch becomes available in the Assessment Batches page.