How-To: Do a Basic Organizational/Unit Assessment

6 min read

This information is for superusers.

Now that you have data about people and inventory in Isora GRC, you can get started with assessments. Follow these steps to perform a basic organizational assessment.

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Before performing an organizational assessment, you need to have at least one unit and a question list (or questionnaire template) that targets units. You will also need an assessment series, which you can create as part of this How-To.
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In the newest versions of Isora GRC, the host categorization part is now optional. The information in the related videos will be updated soon.

Related content:

Performing a Unit Assessment- Old UI

  1. Navigate to the Settings page and click on Assessments in the left-hand nav panel. If you want to use an existing Series, make a mental note of which one you want to use (make sure the target is “Org Unit” since you’re doing an organizational assessment). Or, to create a new series, click the + sign.
  1. If you are creating a new series, assign a name and leave the target type as “Org Unit”. Don’t forget to click Save.

    Remember the name that you assigned.

  1. Go to the Assessments area and click the + sign to create a new one.

  1. Assign a name for this individual assessment (usually tied to the time frame), and choose the correct series. Because the assessment series has a target type, that will determine what options are offered on the next step of the dialog, and it will also determine which question lists are offered in the drop-down. So it’s important to choose a series with the correct target type. Assign a due date and choose a question list. If you leave the status as “Unpublished,” then you can return to the Assessments area in Settings to make changes. Once published, the assessment will show up on the Assessment main page and you won’t be able to make any changes. Click Next Step.
  1. Since you are doing an organizational assessment, the next step allows you to choose which organizational units to include. If you have a lot of them, keep in mind that they may not all show on the first page. You can use the search box if needed. To do a simple organizational assessment without host categorization, uncheck the “Enable host categorization” checkbox. This will save you some time later. Once you’ve chosen all of the OUs to include, click Save.

  1. Now that the assessment has been published, it will show up in the Assessment page. Locate the name of the series and click the > to expand it.

  1. The assessment will be visible to Assessment Managers for each OU that's included. An Assessment Manager (or a superuser) can launch each survey to begin answering the questions to complete the assessment. If you want to launch a survey yourself, click "Launch Survey" button.

  1. The Survey Launch Options dialog opens. If you're just doing a test launch, you may want to change the notification options so that no one gets notified. Click the "Launch" button to begin the survey. (Note: if you had not unchecked the “Enable host categorization” box when creating the assessment, you would see a few additional options on the survey launch window, relating to host categorization.)

  1. Once the survey has been launched, you will see an "In Progress" link to access the survey. (If you had included host categorization, there would be an additional “In Progress” link to access the host categorization part of the survey.)

  1. Click the “In Progress” link to access the Unit Questions part of the survey. Answer the questions and lock each one, or use the "Lock all" button to lock them all when you've finished. If you need to save your work and return to it, you could also use the "Save All" button. Some questions may require additional response in the explanation field, or they may require you to upload supporting documentation. Depending on how the question list is structured, there may also be questions that have children- when you answer the parent with a specific response, additional child questions pop up into the survey.

  1. Once all questions have been locked, you can acknowledge this part of the survey.

  1. At this point, both portions of the survey are complete. From the Assessment page, after once again expanding the series, you can click the "Acknowledge" button to do a pre-final acknowledgement on the entire survey. If notifications are configured, this would send an email to the OU head to indicate that the survey is complete.

  1. At this point, the OU Head for that OU (or any superuser) could log into Isora GRC and do a final acknowledge of the survey. Before doing so, they might want to review the report to ensure accuracy. If there are any problems, they could use the Unaknowledge link to put the survey back into an open state so changes could be made.

  1. Initially after final acknowledging a survey, the survey still appears on the Open tab of the Assessments page. After a refresh, it will disappear (and move to the Complete tab).

  1. When all surveys of an assessment have been completed and final acknowledged, the assessment is complete. If all surveys within the series are complete, the entire series will no longer show up in Open tab on the Assessments page. The individual surveys will show up on the Complete tab instead. Click the button to view a report.

To perform a more customized assessment, you will need to do additional work in the Settings page, such as importing additional question sets and making custom question lists.

Performing a Unit Assessment- New UI

Prerequisites

Before you can perform a unit assessment, you need at least one unit (See also: How to Add an Organizational Unit) and a questionnaire template that targets units (See also: Untitled How to Create a New Question List ). You should also understand the goal of your assessment, its scope, and your timeline for completion before you get started.

Step-by-Step

  1. On the Assessments page, click the New Assessment button.
  1. On the New Assessment dialog, click Unit to start the New Assessment Wizard.
  1. Click Start From Scratch.
  1. In Step 1, you assign Details to the assessment. Assign a meaningful name, choose the appropriate series, and choose a date by which you expect to complete the assessment. If you don’t have an appropriate series yet, you can create a new series directly on this wizard step by typing its name into the Series box and click Create Series.

    You can also update the instructions if needed. You can choose a different set of instructions or edit an existing one. When you’ve finished making changes, click Next Step.

  1. On Step 2, choose a questionnaire template. Then click Next Step.
  1. On Step 3, Scope, click the checkboxes to indicate which unit(s) to include in this assessment. For each one chosen, a separate survey will be created using the same questionnaire template. Click Next Step.
  1. Step 4 is Asset Enrichment. If your units don’t have assets (in Inventory) on sheets assigned to them or you’re not interested in including it, leave this section disabled. Most Isora GRC users do not use asset enrichment at this time. Click Next Step.
  1. On Step 5 you finalize the assessment. Look over what you’ve done and make any changes as needed. You can also customize the survey launch options for the entire assessment from here (See also: Reference: Survey Launch Options ). Click Launch to launch the surveys now, or Publish to allow for later launching. If you don’t want to launch all surveys simultaneously, you should use Publish. Note that whichever option you choose, you will not be able to make any changes to this assessment once finalized.
  1. Your new assessment shows up in the Units area of the Assessments page. Expand the series name and assessment name to view the individual survey progress.
  1. Your surveys are now ready to be completed and acknowledged.
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