How do I set up an assessor-reviewed (open response) assessment?

Assessor functionality lets a designated user review, score, or add feedback to a response before the final report is produced. This article is a high-level overview of the setup. For the full configuration, including the hidden assessor question and conditional logic, see Using Assessor Functionality.

The core setup involves four steps.

1. Enable Open Response. In Assessment Settings > Options, tick the Open Response checkbox and click Save. This is what tells the system that responses are reviewed before completion, and it makes the Show Completed field available on the General tab.

   

2. Set who can complete the response. In Assessment Settings > General > Show Completed, choose who is shown the Complete button. The options are Assessor, Both, No, or Respondent. In most cases this is set to Assessor, so that only the assessor can finalize a response.

   

3. Designate your assessors. For an individual response assessor who is a manager in the system:
   • Confirm the user has the Administrator or Assessment Manager role.
   • Tick the Assessor checkbox on their user profile.
   • Optionally, assign a default assessor through the Organization, so responses linked to that Organization default to the correct assessor.

   

4. Set up an Interim Report and Interim email so the assessor is notified. This step is easy to miss. By default, the assessor is not automatically emailed when a respondent finishes and the response status becomes Answered. For the assessor to be notified at that point, you must:
   • Add an Interim Report to the assessment and set the Assessor as the recipient.
   • Configure an Interim email type to deliver it.

   

   

   Without an Interim Report and Interim email configured, the response will still move to the Answered status, but no email is sent and the assessor will not be alerted that a response is waiting for review. This is the most common reason an assessor reports that they "did not get notified" when someone completed the assessment.

How the response then flows: the respondent answers and clicks Finish (response status becomes Answered), the assessor reviews and adds their input (response status becomes Assessed), and the assessor clicks Complete (response status becomes Completed), which triggers the completion report and email. See What do the response statuses mean (Answered, Assessed, Completed)? for the full stage explanation.

The steps above cover the system and settings configuration. Building the assessment itself, including the hidden assessor question that distinguishes assessor answers from respondent answers and the conditional logic that controls which questions each sees, is covered in full in Using Assessor Functionality.