Edit an assessment

Update sections, questions, reviewers and notification settings of an existing assessment.

This screen is your central workbench for everything that makes a questionnaire-based compliance exercise actually run: which template (or templates) drives the questions, who has to answer them, when they're due, who reviews the answers, and what notifications fire along the way. You'll typically arrive here right after creating an assessment — DPMS automatically lands you on the right starting tab — or later, when you need to adjust deadlines, add a recipient, change a reviewer, or check on progress.

In the bigger DPMS picture, an Assessment glues together three reusable building blocks: an Assessment Template (the master set of questions), one or more Audiences or Recipients (the people who answer), and Workflows (automations that send notifications and move things forward). Without going through this screen, an assessment cannot really be sent out — there's nobody to send it to, no language set, and no reviewer assigned. So expect to spend a few minutes here whenever you create or update an assessment.

How to open it

From the left-hand sidebar, open the Assessments section, then click Assessments. You land on the assessments overview list. Click any row, or click the small pencil icon at the end of a row, to open the editor. Right after creating a new assessment, DPMS forwards you here automatically — directly to Maturity Goals if your chosen template uses maturity scoring, or to Recipients & Notifications otherwise.

This screen is available to users with the Edit Assessments permission. Without that permission, the pencil icon and the Edit menu item simply don't appear, and typing the URL by hand redirects you back to the list.

Screenshot

What you see

The screen uses the standard DPMS detail layout. At the very top is a slim breadcrumb bar showing Assessments › the assessment's name › the active tab. Two small chevrons next to the name flip you to the previous or next assessment in your current list — a real time-saver when auditing several related assessments in a row. On the far right of that bar sits a small clock-with-arrow icon that opens the Activity Log — a side drawer listing every change ever made to this assessment, with timestamps and user names.

On the left is a vertical menu tree of tabs: General, Manage Access, Maturity Goals (only shown if any of your chosen templates use maturity scoring), Recipients & Notifications, Workflows, Reviewer Assignment, Notifications, Responses, Sending Status, and Audiences. The currently active tab is highlighted in blue. A small filled circle at the top collapses or expands the tree, and DPMS remembers your preference between visits.

The main area to the right is a single scrollable card whose contents change with the active tab. Most tabs share the same shape: a title, a stack of inputs or an editable table, and a Save button at the bottom. Several tabs also feature a status strip at the very top — showing the responsible person(s), the current status, the priority, the last updated date, and (where supported) an AI helper button. Each of those status pills is clickable: edit it inline and DPMS saves that single change immediately, without needing the form's main Save.

A three-dots menu in the top right corner gives you secondary actions — typically Manage Access, Sharing (when sharing is enabled in your tenant), and archiving options.

Working with this screen

Setting up a brand-new assessment

After you create an assessment, DPMS drops you straight into the editor. Walk through the tabs from top to bottom — that order is intentional, because each tab depends on choices made in the one before.

On the General tab, give the assessment its identity. Type the Name (use the small flag/translate icon next to it if you need it in multiple languages), pick a Priority (the default is Medium), and tag it under Classification — these tags come from the Tags area in Compliance Settings and are great for grouping things like "Annual ISO Audit" or "Vendor onboarding".
Pick one or more Template entries — this is the most important field on the screen. Each template brings its own questions, sections, and (sometimes) maturity scoring rules. If a template has pre-loaded templates attached, a small grey-yellow info box appears beneath the picker telling you which extra templates will be added automatically — useful when a single audit covers several related standards. Inactive templates don't appear in this list, so if a template is missing, check that it's set to Active under Assessment Templates.
Set the Assessment Deadline (you can't pick a date in the past), then choose a Submission mode. Progressive rolling review lets reviewers act on each section as soon as it's submitted; All at once hides everything from reviewers until the recipient submits the entire questionnaire. An orange warning explains the difference, and this choice is hard to undo cleanly later, so pick deliberately.
Decide whether Show contact details should be on. When it's on, recipients can see who created the assessment when they open it. Some compliance teams want this anonymous, hence the toggle.
Click Save. If any of your chosen templates use maturity scoring, DPMS forwards you to Maturity Goals. Otherwise it skips straight to Recipients & Notifications.
If you landed on Maturity Goals, set a Target Maturity level (CMMI 1–5) — at the template level if every section should match, at the section level for finer control, or per question for the most precision. Each lower level inherits from the one above it. Save when done; DPMS forwards you to Recipients & Notifications.
On Recipients & Notifications, tell DPMS who has to answer. You have two ways to add people. To add a saved group, click Add Audience — DPMS jumps to the Audiences tab where you link an audience, then back here. To add a one-off external respondent, type their address in the email box and click Add Email (pressing Enter works too). Each new recipient row arrives with all available sections already selected.
For each recipient row, click the small pencil under Notification to pick which workflow templates trigger their emails, then click the pencil under Language to choose English or German, and the pencil under Available Sections if you want to limit a recipient to only some parts of the questionnaire. If you need to change several rows at once, tick their checkboxes — a Quick Multiaction bar appears at the top that lets you bulk-edit notification, language and sections in one shot. Click Apply to commit the bulk change or Cancel to back out.
Click Save. DPMS adds the linked audiences to the access list automatically and forwards you to Workflows.
On Workflows, the Workflows Triggering picker is pre-filtered to workflows associated with your chosen templates. Pick the ones that should fire globally on this assessment (for example, a yearly reminder), save, and DPMS continues to Reviewer Assignment.
On Reviewer Assignment, DPMS shows one row per template-section pair. Click the pencil under Section Reviewers and pick the user(s) who should validate the answers in that section. Sections without any reviewer assigned are simply dropped from the saved configuration, which is handy if you only want some sections to be formally reviewed.
Finally, on the Notifications tab, decide which internal users should receive lifecycle emails — when the assessment is created, when a response is sent, when the assessment is completed, and when something is resubmitted. Each user appears as one row with four checkboxes; tick whichever apply.

Adding a single external auditor to an existing assessment

A common request: "we just need to send this to one auditor as well." Open the assessment, switch to Recipients & Notifications, type the auditor's email in the email box, and click Add Email. The new row appears in the table with all sections pre-selected. Click the pencil under Notification and pick the workflow that suits external auditors (for example, a reminder cadence different from internal recipients), then the pencil under Language to pick German if appropriate, and finally the pencil under Available Sections if the auditor should only see a subset. Click Save — that's it.

Pausing an assessment without deleting it

If you need to halt an assessment temporarily — for example, while a template is being revised — open the General tab and switch off the Active toggle (the toggle only appears on existing assessments, never during creation). With it off, recipients can no longer respond, but everything you configured is preserved. Switch it back on later to resume.

Reviewing answers and progress

Once recipients start answering, three tabs become particularly useful:

Responses lists submitted responses, grouped by template. Each row links to the response review screen in a new tab.
Sending Status shows, per recipient, whether the questionnaire email actually went out, when, and the delivery result. This is what you check when someone says "I never got the email".
Answers and Results (reachable from the small external-link icon in the Results column on the assessments list) gives you a richer view: three coloured cards at the top count Answers to be reviewed, Answers to be resubmitted, and Reviewed answers, and below them every question is grouped by template and section with collapse arrows. Three switches at the top right — Questions and Answers, Intermediary Results, Final Results — let you focus on just what you need. A Go to Response button takes you to the full response view.

Updating an assessment after a template was revised

If the master template you're using gets edited (questions added, sections reordered), DPMS shows a Templates Which Require Review panel on the General tab. Hover the info icon next to a listed template to see exactly what changed — for example, "Questions added: 3, Section reordered: 1". Acknowledge the changes and save; DPMS will recalculate which template version this assessment uses.

Field reference

Name — the assessment's display name. Multilingual; use the small translate icon to enter it in additional languages. If AI credentials are set up under IT Settings, DPMS can auto-translate.
Priority — Low, Medium (default), High, or Critical. Purely an organisational signal for your team; it does not change behaviour.
Classification — one or more tags from the Assessment Classifications list in Compliance Settings → Tags. Use them to slice your assessment portfolio in dashboards and lists.
Template — the master questionnaire(s) that drive the questions. Required. Picking a template that has pre-loaded templates will silently add those linked templates too — the info box beneath the picker tells you which.
Assessment Deadline — when responses are due. Cannot be in the past.
Submission mode — Progressive rolling review (default) or All at once. See the orange explanation note next to the field; choose carefully because it changes how reviewers experience the assessment.
Active toggle — on existing assessments only. When off, recipients cannot respond.
Show contact details — when on, recipients see the creator's contact details inside the questionnaire.
Audiences (Manage Access tab) — saved groups of users who can open and edit the assessment record itself. Different from recipients.
Users (Manage Access tab) — individual users with edit access to this assessment.
Target Maturity — a CMMI level from 1 (Initial) to 5 (Optimized). Sets the benchmark used in maturity gap reports.
Notification (per recipient row) — one or more workflow templates that fire when this recipient is sent the questionnaire or reminded.
Language (per recipient row) — English or German; controls the language of the notification emails sent to that recipient.
Available Sections (per recipient row) — which sections of the questionnaire that recipient can see. When all sections are selected, the cell shows the literal "All".
Workflows Triggering — workflows that fire globally on this assessment (rather than per recipient). Pre-filtered to workflows linked to the chosen templates.
Section Reviewers — the user(s) who validate answers for a given template-section pair. Sections without any reviewer are simply skipped at review time.

How this connects to the rest of DPMS

This screen sits at the centre of a small ecosystem. Audiences and users come from Compliance Settings; templates from Assessment Templates; workflows from the Workflows area; tags from Compliance Settings → Tags. What you configure here flows out to several other parts of DPMS:

Notification emails to recipients only fire if at least one workflow is set on the recipient row in Recipients & Notifications. No workflow on the row, no email.
Reviewer dashboards elsewhere only show this assessment's sections to a user if that user is assigned as a reviewer here.
Maturity heat-maps and gap reports read the Target Maturity values you set on this screen.
The activity log captures every change made here, providing the audit trail that compliance officers rely on.

Once you're done editing, the natural next step is to verify the assessment is Active and watch Sending Status to confirm the questionnaire went out. After that, Responses and Answers and Results become your day-to-day touchpoints.

Tips & common pitfalls

Tip: Save the General tab first whenever you change templates. Templates drive which sections appear in Recipients & Notifications and Reviewer Assignment — if you don't save first, those tabs will show stale section lists.

Heads up: Recipients are not the same as Manage Access. Recipients are the people who answer the questionnaire; Manage Access defines who can edit the assessment record itself. They live on different tabs on purpose.

New email recipients are added with all sections selected by default. If you only want to expose one section to that auditor, narrow it down with the pencil before saving.
The Active toggle is hidden during creation — new assessments are saved as Active automatically. Use the toggle later to pause an assessment without deleting it.
Submission mode is hard to change cleanly once recipients are working. Pick it deliberately on creation.
If a template you know exists isn't appearing in the Templates picker, check its status under Assessment Templates — only Active templates are shown.
Archived assessments become read-only-ish: the response table is unclickable, Answers and Results hides the counter cards, and an "External Import" badge replaces the filter switches.
The Activity Log button is intentionally hidden in Sharing and Consulted modes — those modes are for downstream consumers of a shared element, and the change history belongs to the source tenant.