Capital Projects / Condition Assessment / Background Data
Sustainability & Risk / Sustainability Assessment / Background Data
Capital Projects / Commissioning / Set Up

Defining Questions for Field Assessments

When performing field assessments, you may wish to have field assessors answer a questionnaire with a set of questions specific to each assessment project type and each type of equipment. For example, if you have a project type for a yearly condition assessment and another project type for a condition assessment after a damaging storm, you will want a different set of questions for each assessment. Similarly, the questions you require for assessing personal computer equipment will differ from those you require for the building's HVAC equipment.

Once you define your assessment questions for various equipment standards and projects, the questions will appear on the following forms:

Note: Condition Assessment and Sustainability Assessment projects are automatically set to have a project type of ASSESSMENT. If you need to create a new project type, use the Commissioning / Set Up / Define Project Types task and name your new project type beginning with ASSESSMENT.

Note: This topic covers the original questionnaire system. The Compliance application uses the extended questionnaire system which offers additional features.

Define Assessment Questionnaires

To set up a questionnaire:

  1. Select the Define Assessment Questionnaires task.
  2. Click Add New. The Edit Questionnaire window appears.
  3. Enter the following required information:
    Questionnaire Code Click in the Questionnaire Code field and a pop-up window displays a list of your defined project types. Select an assessment project type from the list. The system fills in the Questionnaire Code field using the project type you selected, and adds the prefix ASSESSMENT-.
    Questionnaire TitleEnter a title to further identify the questionnaire
    DescriptionOptionally, enter a description for the questionnaire.
  1. Click Save.
  2. The Questionnaires tab now includes this questionnaire. Questions you add to this questionnaire will appear only on assessment forms for the project type that is specified in the questionnaire.

To set up a question:

  1. Select the questionnaire for which you want to define a question. Click Edit.
  2. The system displays any existing questions for this questionnaire. Do one of the following:
    • To edit a question, select Edit in the row for the question.
    • To add a new question, click Add Question.

    The Add or Edit Question form appears.

  3. Enter the following fields:
    Question NameEnter a unique identifier for the question
    Question TextEnter the question text that you want to appear to users. This text cannot contain special XML characters, such as, <>&’”.
    Sort OrderSpecify the order in which questions appear on the form by setting Sort Order. The system consults the Sort Order values when determining the order in which to display questions on the form. The question with the lower value is placed first; the question with the highest value is listed last.
    Is Active?If you want the question to appear in the edit form, set Is Active? to Yes. If you want to establish this question now but have it appear on the form at a later time, choose No
    Format Type

    Define the type of question you want to create by completing the Format Type field. Choose one of the following:

    • Look Up presents a Select Values dialog so that the user can choose values from the table and field specified below in the Look-Up Table and Look-Up Field options.

    • Free Form presents a blank field so that the user can type in a free-form value.

    • Enumerated presents the users with a list of values from which to choose. You define these values with the Enum List field below

  1. Depending on the Format Type option specified above, set how the user can respond to the question by completing one of the following:
    Enumerated ListIf Enumerated is chosen for Format Type, complete Enumeration List with a list of values that the user can choose. Separate the response values with semi-colons

    Look Up Table

    Look Up field

    If Look Up is chosen for the Format Type, complete Look-Up Table and Look-Up Field options with the table and field whose values will display in the Select Values dialog presented to the user.
    Free Form WidthIf Free Form is chosen for Format Type, in the Free-Form Width field enter the maximum length of the value that the user can enter in the HTML input form
  1. For questions with the Format Type Enumerated, if you want the user's response to this question to trigger an action, you can complete the following fields. The Action Types must already exist in the database.
    Answer Generating Action Item ResponseIf the user’s response is equal to the value for this field, then the system creates an Action Item record of the Action Type specified below. For instance, if for an Equipment Move? question, this field has a value of Yes, and Action Type above is Move Data, and the user's response is Yes, then the program generates a Move Data Action Item
    Type of Action Item ResponseSpecifies the type of Action Item to create if the user responds to the question with the value that is specified for the Answer Generating Action Item Response field. The system inserts the text from the Instructions field of the Activity Types table into the description of the Action Item record it creates.
  1. Click Save to save the question in the questionnaire.
  2. From the Questions tab, click View Questionnaire to review the project request forms for each project type to review the questions you have added.

Note: Currently the functionality described in step 5 does not exist.(AD-4123)

Define Questionnaire Mapping

Once your questionnaires are defined, use the Define Questionnaire Mapping task to map the questionnaire with a specific project type and equipment standard.

Questionnaires are mapped to both equipment standard and project type. This allows one piece of equipment to have different assessment questionnaires and questions for different project types (for example, Condition Assessment, Commissioning, and Sustainability Assessments). Mapping the Questionnaires to the Equipment Standard makes it easy for the assessment manager to map one questionnaire to many (typically 1,000’s) pieces of equipment with a single data entry. It also facilitates automatically assigning questionnaires to Assessment Items when the Assessment project is created.

To map the questionnaire to a project and equipment standard:

  1. In the left panel, select the questionnaire.
  2. In the right panel, complete the project type and the equipment standard for which the system should present this questionnaire.