Creating Auto-Assessments

OverviewConfiguringTriggeringMultiple Respondents

Overview

Companies often want to ask respondents a few qualifying questions to determine if a full assessment is needed at all. Assessment Manager lets you separate these threshold questions into a standalone assessment that can automatically trigger a linked assessment — called an Auto-Assessment — when the respondent's answers meet a defined condition.

A Threshold Assessment can be configured to trigger different or multiple linked assessments depending on the respondent's answers. Each linked assessment can trigger further Auto-Assessments of its own, supporting a cascading workflow.

Configuring an Auto-Assessment Condition

In the example below, a Threshold Assessment has two questions. A DPIA Assessment should be triggered whenever the respondent answers "Yes" to "Do you collect any data from EU residents?" (1) and also selects "Medical History" for "What kind of data do you collect?" (2).

1

Click the context menu to the right of Add and select Add Auto-Assessment.

2

On the Add Auto Assessment screen, define the condition. Specify any combination of question/answer pairs connected with AND and OR (3). Add additional condition groups using AND IF, AND IF NOT, OR IF, or OR IF NOT group operators (4). For more information, see Section Conditions based on Multiple Questions.

In this example, the condition triggers when the respondent answers "Yes" to "Do you collect any data from EU residents?" AND selects "Medical History" for "What kind of data do you collect?".

3

Click Next and select the template (5) for the linked Auto-Assessment. Only published templates are displayed in the list (6). Use the search field if needed.

4

Configure the parameters to be applied to all triggered Auto-Assessments.

Copy from parent — Copies the Respondent, Owner, Approvers, and Participants from the parent assessment. This is the factory default.

Specific User — Assign new values to the Respondent, Owner, Approvers, and Participants fields. Click the field, select Specific User, and search for the user from the dropdown.

Contact From Respondent — Assign the Respondent or Participants by selecting a template section and a Contact Form question from that section.

📋 Additional parameters

›Labels — Specify labels to auto-assign to triggered Auto-Assessments. Labels from the parent assessment are not inherited. See Using Assessment Labels.

›Assessment Tags — Custom fields configured by your company administrator. Custom field values from the parent are not copied. See Adding custom tag fields.

›Auto-Assessment names are auto-generated from the parent assessment name plus a date/time suffix.

›Advanced settings from the parent (Expiration Date, Periodic Reminders, etc.) are not copied to Auto-Assessments. Open the triggered assessment and update them manually. See Creating an Assessment.

5

Click Add Condition. To verify the Auto-Assessment was added, click Conditions in the left panel of the Template Details page and locate it in the list.

Triggering Auto-Assessments

A pre-configured Auto-Assessment triggers as soon as submitted answers satisfy the condition. In the screenshot below, the Auto-Assessment is generated the moment the respondent clicks Submit.

The respondent sees no on-screen notice. The parent Threshold Assessment progresses to Survey Complete state as normal. However, the respondent receives two email notifications:

One notifying them that additional questions were assigned:

And another notifying them that a separate assessment was created:

The triggered Auto-Assessment is published directly into Survey state. By default it is assigned to the Default Respondent of the Threshold Assessment and inherits the same Approvers and Participants. To update any fields or reassign respondents/approvers, locate the assessment on the Assessments page and update it as described in Editing the Assessment.

The auto-assigned name of a triggered assessment includes the parent assessment name, the linked template name, and a unique identifier:

Auto-Assessments with Multiple Respondents

An Auto-Assessment triggers as soon as submitted answers meet the condition — even when the condition spans multiple sections assigned to different respondents.

In the example below, the condition references questions from two sections: "Do you collect any data from EU residents?" and "What kind of data do you collect?" (1) from Section 1, and "Do you collect Sensitive PII?" (2) from Section 2.

Because conditions (1) and (2) are connected with OR IF, the Auto-Assessment triggers as soon as either is satisfied. If Section 1 and Section 2 are assigned to different respondents, the Auto-Assessment can be triggered the moment either respondent submits qualifying answers — even if the other respondent has not yet finished. The Auto-Assessment can therefore be triggered while the parent Threshold Assessment is still in Survey state.

📋 One Auto-Assessment per condition

›No more than one Auto-Assessment of a particular type is generated per condition. If the first respondent triggers it, the second respondent's qualifying answers will not trigger a second one.

›If a reviewer reassigns sections for re-answering and the re-submitted answers also meet the condition, no second Auto-Assessment is generated. However, if no Auto-Assessment was generated initially, and the re-submitted answers now meet the condition, the Auto-Assessment will trigger. See Assessment States and Reassigning Assessment Sections.

You can add any number of Auto-Assessment conditions associated with the same or different templates. In the example below, if the respondents select "Name," "Email address," and "Medical History" for the data collection question AND answer "Yes" to "Do you collect Sensitive PII?", two DPIA Assessments are triggered because there are two independent conditions.

TrustArc  ·  Adding Auto-Assessments  ·  support.trustarc.com