WO2007118273A1

WO2007118273A1 - Advanced questionnaire software module

Info

Publication number: WO2007118273A1
Application number: PCT/AU2007/000484
Authority: WO
Inventors: Anthony Richard Summers; Maciej Jerzy Kiernikowski; Phillip Haselden
Original assignee: 80-20 Software Pty. Limited
Priority date: 2006-04-13
Filing date: 2007-04-13
Publication date: 2007-10-25

Abstract

The invention is an online software module for a questionnaire for use by an organisation such as businesses and corporations. The module provides a questionnaire which is distributed electronically, monitors control activities, regulatory and policy compliance obligations, effects reminders where necessary and automatically collates and distributes results of the questionnaire to selected users of the module.

Description

ADVANCED QUESTIONNAIRE SOFTWARE MODULE

Area of the Invention

This invention relates to the area of compliance software and in particular to a software module adapted for use by organisations to to permit them to automate their conduct of questionnaires without the need for .

Background to the Invention

It has been customary in the corporate environment for any questionnaires which are required to be carried out as part of the business management to be in paper form. The questionnaire is first devised, then physically distributed, then returned and physically collated and distributed to relevant personnel. Alternatively email may be used to effect distribution and to remind respondents of deadlines and the like.

This Js clearly a clumsy procedure and in an environment tending more towards office automation, is an inefficient approach to information gathering and dissemination.

Outline of the Invention

It is an object of this invention to provide questionnaire software which is able to replace the manual approach described above and to provide questionnaire software which is able to interact with and provide an adjunct to compliance and risk management software.

The invention is a software module for a questionnaire, said module being adapted to be used online, which module provides a questionnaire which is distributed electronically, monitors control activities, regulatory and policy compliance obligations, effects reminders where necessary and automatically collates and distributes results of the questionnaire to selected users of the module.

It is preferred that the. module be menu based and that menus be accessible to the users required to answer the questionnaire as well as the questionnaire authors.

For example it is preferred that where the term questionnaire appears on the menu selecting that item will display all questionnaires which that user is entitled to access.

It is further preferred that Respondents will see only questionnaires that they are authorised to see whereas authors can also see those that they have authored.

From this listing of available questionnaires a respondent can open a questionnaire and answer it. An author can either edit a questionnaire or view the responses and run general reports.

It is also preferred that there be more than one type of questionnaire provided.

It is further preferred that at least two types of questionnaire be provided, a first questionnaire being a standard questionnaire which applies to anyone in an organisation whereas a second questionnaire is in structured form such that the internal hierarchy of an organisation is taken into account such that specific questions can be mapped against specific respondents in that hierarchical structure.

In order that the invention may be more readily understood we will describe by way of non limiting example a specific embodiment of the invention. Description of an Embodiment of the Invention

The following table specifies the basic characteristics of the questionnaires of the invention using the following terminology listed below the table.

Can assign many people Uf tηg_jfurtjye Directory Groypj^

Hierarchical structure

Can define hierarchical entity structure - _„ . _. _ .!!

Entity owners, approvers and viewers can view sub-entities _ _ _ J__

Reports can include full hierarchical structure _ _ _ " _ _„ 5

Can define basic groups for reporting purposes _ _ _ _ .. " _ _ _ :

Other

Delegation _ .; Jf_

Each response can have additional approvers _ _ - _ _ __.

Reports can handle lOOO's of respondents _J_ _ ^•

Overriding of lower level answers _ _____ __, : . J__,

Preferred and Non-preferred answers ___ _ _ _■__

Non preferred responses require reasons _ . . _? . . !_

Custom answer sets - ■

Respondents may also provide additional information in the comments field

Both the author and respondent can attach documents to each question

* Structured questionnaires explicitly define the structure and the individual owners and approvers

Terminology used in the Specification

Author: Person responsible for creating the questionnaire, creating the questions, assigning respondents, publishing and monitoring the questionnaire;

Certification: Represents the certification text which an owner (or delegate) will certify at the conclusion of responding to the questions;

Response: The set of answers submitted by the respondent (standard questionnaires) or entity (structured questionnaires);

Questionnaire: A discrete set of questions designed for a specific compliance/regulatory requirement. Companies will typically use questionnaires as a mechanism to prove or certify that they have met their compliance and/or regulatory obligations. Questionnaires can also be used in an ad hoc manner as a way to extract company information Respondent: The person who answered a question. In standard questionnaires this is the person assigned the questions. In structured questionnaires this may be the entity owner, a delegate, an approver or someone else further up the entity tree who has overridden an answer. The respondent will only have access to questionnaires where he has been nominated to answer questions, and will only see the questions to which he must respond;

In addition to these concepts, Structured Questionnaires introduce the following additional concepts:

Entities:

An Entity represents a region, group or individual which exists within a hierarchical structure known as an entity structure. The author defines the entities and issues questions within the questionnaire to one or more these entities. Typically the entity structure will reflect the structure of an organization, e.g. countries at the top level, business units at the next level and departments at the bottom level. The entity structure can be used purely for reporting purposes or to control the flow of questionnaire responses back to the author.

An entity has the following characteristics:

^■ An entity can have zero or more sub entities, which in turn can have sub entities forming a hierarchical structure.

^■ An entity can be assigned zero or more questions.

^• There are two types of entities, a consolidating entity and non- consolidating entity.

o A non-consolidating entity is usually created to provide an appropriate hierarchical structure for reporting. It is not required to participate in the questionnaire response process unless it has been assigned one or more questions. o A consolidating entity must participate in the questionnaire response process, i.e. the entity is required to submit a response which is effectively the responses of its sub-entities. The consolidating entity can also override one or more answers submitted by the sub-entities. Therefore consolidating entities can affect the flow of responses back to the author. Furthermore, if a consolidating entity has been assigned one or more questions, it is required to submit a certified response to these questions.

^■ An entity may or may not be assigned an owner. An owner is mainly responsible for performing actions on behalf of the entity, such as answering questions and/or certifying and submitting the entity's response.

Because an owner of an entity is responsible for answering assigned questions and submitting a response, only entities that have been allocated an owner can be assigned questions.

^• An entity can be assigned zero or more approvers whose role is to approve the questionnaire response submitted by the owner.

^• An entity can be assigned zero or more viewers who can view the responses of the entity and sub entities.

^• It is important to note that the author of the questionnaire is responsible for defining the entity structure, and assigning owners, approvers and viewers to the various entities.

Due Dates:

A Due date is the date by which an entity needs to complete all responses to questions submitted. All consolidating sub-entity due dates (to all levels) must be earlier or equal to the entity due date. Each entity has it's own due date. No due date checks required against non-consolidating sub-entities. Owners:

An owner is a 'gatekeeper' of an entity as pre-determined by the author, and may be responsible for submitting questionnaire responses and reviewing the responses of the sub-entities, on behalf of an entity.

An owner will perform the following actions:

o If an entity has been assigned questions, the owner will receive an email notification which contains a link to the questionnaire. The owner must either answer the questions or delegate the questions to other individuals. Once all questions have been answered, the owner submits a response which includes all the answers. The act of submitting the response also requires the generation of a report and certification that all questions have been answered correctly.

o For a consolidating entity, the owner must submit a certified response even if there are no questions assigned to the consolidating entity. In this case, the owner will review the responses submitted by the sub-entities and may override one or more answers before submitting a response on behalf of the consolidating entity.

o For non-consolidating entities that have not been assigned any questions, the owner is not required to certify and submit a response.

In all cases, an owner will submit a questionnaire response either to an approver, a parent consolidating entity or directly back to the author. It is important to note that the flow of responses is controlled by the Leaders system as defined by the author. Approvers:

Approvers are people in an entity who look at the response generated by the owner on behalf of the entity and either approve or reject it. These are usually people high up within an organization such as the CFO and CEO. An approver therefore can not be assigned to an entity unless there is an owner.

it is possible to assign multiple approvers to one entity. In such a case approval is done in a sequential manner. The approval process is as follows.

o The owner submits the response on behalf of the entity.

o The first approver is notified of the response via email. The email includes a link to the entity's response submitted by the owner. The first approver can either reject or accept the response. If rejected, the owner is notified via email and is required to make adjustments as specified by the approver.

o If the response is accepted, the second approver is notified with an email that contains a link to the entity's response. It is important to note that when accepting a response, the first approver also has the choice of overriding any answer submitted by the original owner. Therefore the second approver will effectively review the response of the first approver, and may reject or accept the response. The second approver can also choose override any answer within the submitted response.

o If rejected by the second approver, the first approver will receive a notification of the rejection and will be required to make the appropriate adjustments.

o if the second approver accepts the response, the next approver in the chain is notified. If there are no approvers remaining, the response will be sent to the next consolidating entity up the entity chain or the author if no other consolidating entities exist.

Viewers:

The viewer is an individual who can view the questionnaire responses from their entity downwards, in read-only mode only, even after the questionnaire has been completed.

Delegates:

If an entity has been assigned one or more questions, the owner of the entity can either choose to answer the questions directly or delegate some or even all of the questions to other individuals. An individual that is delegated a question is known as the delegate.

When a delegate has been assigned to one or more questions, he will be notified via an email that contains a link to the questionnaire. Typically the delegate will answer the questions and submit the response back to the owner. However it is possible for the delegate to submit a response that only has some questions, or even none of the questions, answered. In any case the delegate's response does not include a certification. Rather the owner will review the delegate's answers, possibly overriding some of these, and submit and certify the questionnaire response to the next individual in the process, i.e. an approver, consolidating entity owner or author.

Overrides

Overrides are the ability for someone further up the chain to change an answer.

When someone overrides an answer they will be required to enter a reason for the override. Note that this is different from the non-preferred answer reason.

Whenever an override is made, the answer is flagged to indicate it that it has been overridden. This flag-can be optionally shown in reports.

The history/audit Jog will contain all information about the override, so it is possible to see information about the answer before and after the override(s).

Preferred answers and Answer Sets:

!n addition to the standard Yes, No and N/A answers available in standard questionnaires, structured questionnaires allow authors to:

Provide alternative answers to each question.

^■ Define which of the answers are preferred. For example, for a question such as "Have you stolen anything from the company" which is using the standard choices of answer, then No is the preferred answer. This helps to avoid having questions that have double negatives and are therefore difficult to understand. It also allows for multiple preferred or non- preferred answers.

Some typical answers the author might define include:

Ranges, e.g. strongly disagree, disagree, agree, strongly agree.

Multiple choice: e.g. yellow, blue, green, yellowor green, all of the above, none of the above.

A question must have at least 1 preferred answer.

A question must have at least 1 non-preferred answer.

Respondents are NOT able to select multiple answers per question. Preferred/non-preferred settings are available on current Yes/No/N/A questions as well, with Yes being the preferred answer by default.

First Embodiment of the Invention - Standard Questionnaire

An example of an embodiment of the invention is. a standard questionnaire in which one body constructs and manages the questionnaire. This body publishes it to anyone in the relevant organisation thereby bypassing any hierarchical parent structure.

Creating the Standard Questionnaire

The Author creating the questionnaire can define the title, description and due date of the questionnaire as welt as list the questions to which users are to respond. In addition ad hoc questions can be created or imported.

It is also preferred that a certification statement be defined which is displayed when a user submits and certifies that what has been answered is correct. The author can keep the questionnaire as a draft and open to modification however it is preferred that no further modification be possible once the questionnaire has been published.

It is preferred that once the questionnaire is complete that email notifications be automatically sent to each user when it is available for viewing, when it is published and also when it is near its due date to act as a reminder if the questionnaire has not been adequately responded to.

Typically a viewer responses screen is provided to an author from which screen a series of questionnaire reports can be run to establish its current status. The arrangement is such that the author can view individual respondent's responses to date as well as a consolidated summary of various responses.

It is preferred that a total summary of a questionnaire provide a list of negative and non applicable responses sorted by question and userforall Users. The reason orcomment is also displayed. A summary for each user can also be generated which only displays negative and N/A responses to questions for the selected user. Alternatively the author can choose to run custom reports based on groups of users. Such a custom report can be provided by selecting a list of users whose responses are consolidated.

It is further preferred that an audit trail be generated for all users or a selected user only. It includes all actions on the questionnaire such as the creation and publishing of the questionnaire. It therefore provides an audit trail of who completed which questions at which time or it can provide only the level of audit required. The author can choose to run a log report for all actions that have occurred by all users or can restrict the report to specific actions and users. The actions include the following:

^• creating a draft of the questionnaire

^• editing a draft of the questionnaire

providing preview ability to the questionnaire

publishing the questionnaire

answering a question

answering yes to a question

^■ answering no to a question

^■ answering N/A to a question

specifying a reason for a negative of N/A response

^• specifying a conclusion to the questionnaire Finally, if an author is dissatisfied with the questionnaire response of any user the response can be rejected, which generates an email notification to the users to refill out the response. As part of the rejection process the author may specify the reasons why the response is being rejected and these reasons will be included in the email.

All users are required to submit their answers to the questions within the various questionnaires they have been assigned to. A link to their individual questionnaires will be sent via email and be accessible to the meeting management system.

A questionnaire may typically require more than one sitting to complete. Users may therefore answer the questions and save the questionnaire as a work in progress. When an assistant has submitted the questionnaire an email will be generated notifying the user. It is preferred that a compulsory reason be given by a user to any negative or N/A answer before a user is able to submit the questionnaire.

Once the user has submitted the questionnaire the user will be immediately asked to certify that what has been answered is accurate. This process allows the certifier to lodge a document such as a scanned signature as proof that the questionnaire has been certified.

Some examples of possible business rules are given below:

Publishing and Reporting Scenario one

The first example shows that a person can belong to multiple 'groups' and that they might be required answer the same question for each group to which they belong It also shows that multiple people in a group may be asked to answer the same question

Another way to illustrate the same thing is:

Publishing and Reporting Scenario two

This scenario attempts to determine if there is a requirement to have multiple types of

groups.

From these scenarios we can determines some rules.

Business Rules

Need to report on a group level. For a Corporate compliance questionnaire, this grouping will be by Business unit.

Zero to N (O..n) people in each group may be required to answer a particular question.

A person can belong to multiple groups If this is so, it must be clear to the person which group they are answering for. This could be achieved by presenting the user with 2 separate questionnaires. For example, if Rob from scenario 1 above logged on his main screen could include a table like this:

Ultimately (i e. not in first version) there might be multiple types of groups. For example, the second scenario above has both Business Unit groups and Project groups.

Data structures

in order to be able to report on groups and store the data there are 3 types of data to be stored: Questions, People and Groups.

In order for the many to many relationships to be implemented as discussed above the table structure would be something like:

Alternatively, a less normalized version might be.

In this case if a real person belonged to multiple groups they would have multiple Person records.

In standard questionnaires "groups" are used to define a pseudo-structure which is only used for reporting purposes. Business Process

Run A Questionnaire (A Process Overview)

Publish Questionnaire to Respondents

AUTHOR

Answer the Questionnaire

The above summarises the standard questionnaires module. The structured questionnaires take this and extend it with custom answer sets, preferred/non-preferred answers, entity structure, approvers, viewers, delegation and overrides.

Second Embodiment of the Invention - Structured Questionnaires

Creating the Structured Questionnaire.

The questionnaire can be created anew or a copy of an existing questionnaire can be made. The author defines:

o Type - the type of questionnaire. The Admin module lets users create custom Types and also configure the email templates for each of the notifications that are triggered as follows:

^mmmsm tmmmmmmm

Questionnaire Administration Questionnaire Types

NotificationJTemrjlates

Questionnaire Published Edit

Response Not Complete Response Not Started Questionrtaire Cancelled Delegation Cancelled Questions Delegated Delegated Questions Answered Answer Rejected

o Title - The Title of the questionnaire.

o Options

Owners can delegate questions to other people to answer - select this option if you wish to allow respondent to delegate questions to others.

Answers can be overridden - select this option if you want to allow users to override answers. This is possible for respondents who have delegated a question, approvers or consolidating entity owners. o Notifications

^■ Respondents who have not started X days before the due date - select this option if you wish to send an email reminder to respondents who have not commenced answering their questionnaire X days before the due date.

^■ Respondents & Approvers who have not completed or approved X days before the due date - select this option if you wish to send an email reminder to respondents who have not completed answering their questionnaire or approvers who have not approved a questionnaire response X days before the due date.

o Owner Certification Text - The certification text displayed when a respondent submits and certifies their questionnaire response,

o Approver Certification Text - The certification text displayed when an approver approves and certifies another person's questionnaire response.

The Author then adds and edits questions:

Questions can be added one at a time or imported from an external file. For each question the author defines the formatted question text, the set of possible answers, which of the answers are preferred and which are non preferred, any attachments to the question, and the position of the question in the questionnaire.

The Author then defines the entity structure:

Entites in the entity structure can be added one at a time or imported from an external file. For each entity the Author defines the entity title, 0 or 1 Owner, 0 or more Approvers, 0 or more Viewers, which questions the entity is required to answer, the due date for the entity response, whether the entity is a consolidating entity or not, and any subentities.

Publishing the Structured Questionnaire

Once the author has finished defining the questions and entity structure they can publish the questionnaire. During publishing the system checks that all business rules are met, the questions and entity structure are locked down to prevent further editing, and all entity owners are informed via email that they have a questionnaire response to complete. The process that the entity owners follow is described in the section 'Entity Response' below.

Monitoring the Questionnaire

The author can monitor the progress of all the entities by using the Monitoring tab which shows the entity structure and indicators for each entity. The indicators include: response status, percentage of questions answered, and numbers of preferred, non-preferred and unanswered questions. Overdue responses or responses that are incomplete within a defined number of days of the due date are highlighted. The author can drill down into the indicators to get more detailed information.

Running Reports on the Questionnaire

The author may use the reporting section to view, print or export any number of standard predefined reports or they may create custom reports.

Closing the questionnaire

Once all entities have completed their responses and the lifecycle of the questionnaire is complete the author closes the questionnaire. Up until the questionnaire is published the author may delete the questionnaire. After publication the author may cancel the questionnaire before it is complete.

The Answering Process

Entity owners are notified of questionnaire publication - Each entity owner receives an email informing them that a questionnaire has been published which they are required to respond to on behalf of their entity. The questionnaire also appears on the Questionnaires home page in the To Be Answered' section.

An Owner views the questions they are to answer - An entity owner accesses their response through a hyperlink in their notification email or through the Questionnaires home page. The page opens to the first question they have been allocated. For each question three main areas are visible: the question text with any attachments, the area used for answering the question, and an area where sub-entity answers to the question can be viewed. Buttons are available to move to the next and previous questions.

list is used for ' quick navigation and < - αe> . _ή ..- also to get an ^ SΞS;L«,S - § overview of the ≡ⁱ %!£?S£?^r * 8^m response i _{^ Λtv}»™. status. The list shows each question number (hyperlinked) and its current answer status - preferred, non preferred or non answered. The question list can be filtered by answer status, delegation status and whether to show additional questions that have been allocated to sub entities.

An Owner answers questions. - When answering a question the respondent clicks on the radio button representing their choice. A Reason text box is available which must be filled out if the answer selected is a non-preferred answer, but is optional otherwise. The respondent may add additional comments and attachments.

When answering a question the owner takes into account the sub-entities answers to the question. Instead of answering the question directly the Owner may delegate the question to someone else to answer (see Delegation Process below). The Owner may override sub-entity answers if their entity is a consolidating entity.

After all questions answered, the owner certifies and submits the response.

The Response is passed to first entity approver (see Approval Process below) or, in the case where there are no approvers, to the parent entity. Reasons for non-preferred responses are required. Comments may be optionally provided. Documents/links can be added to each response.

The Approval Process

Entity approvers check an entity's response before it is sent to the parent entity. An Approver opens the response and checks the owner's answers and sub- entity answers. The Approver may override any answers in their entity's response. The Approver may also override sub-entity answers if their entity is a consolidating entity.

The Approver may reject a response, in which case the response is passed back to the previous approver if there is one, or to the entity owner.

If the Approver certifies and approves the response, the response is passed to next approver or, in the case where there are no more approvers, to the parent entity.

Delegation Process

An author can delegate a question, or questions, to someone else to answer. This person the questions are delegated to is called the Delegate.

Delegates are notified by email when questions have been delegated to them. The delegate receives an email informing them that question(s) have been delegated to them. The questionnaire appears on the Questionnaires home page in the To Be Answered' section in the Delegated questions table.

The delegate accesses the delegated questions and either answers them, or delegates them on to someone else.

Once all delegated questions have been answered the delegate returns their answers back to the delegator i.e. the person who delegated them.

The delegator checks the delegate's answers. The delegator can optionally reject the delegate's answers or override them.

A delegator can cancel delegated questions.

Data Structures

In structured questionnaires a real hierarchical/tree structure can be built with many levels. This entity structure is not only used for reporting but also for workflow and business rule purposes.

There is a single root entity. Each entity can have many sub-entities. Each entity has one parent entity, except the root entity which has no parent.

People belonging to roles in an entity can view the responses of all sub-entities and sub-sub-entities. If the entity is a consolidating entity then the owner and approvers of the entity can override sub-entity answers.

While we have described herein two particular embodiments of the invention it is to be understood that variations and modifications in the features described can still lie within the scope of the invention.

Claims

The claims defining the invention are as follows:

1. A software module fora questionnaire, said module being adapted to be used online, which module provides a questionnaire which is distributed electronically, monitors control activities, regulatory and policy compliance obligations, effects reminders where necessary and automatically collates and distributes results of the questionnaire to selected users of the module.

2. A software module as claimed in claim 1 wherein a questionnaire is created by an author and is answered by a respondent.

3. A software module as claimed in claim 2 wherein the module is menu based.

4. A software module as claimed in claim 3 wherein the menus are accessible to users required to answer the questionnaire as well as the questionnaire authors.

5. A software module as claimed in claim 4 wherein respondents will see only questionnaires that they are authorised to see.

B. A software module as claimed in claim 5 wherein authors can also see those questionnaires that they have authored.

7. A software module as claimed in claim 6 wherein from a listing of available questionnaires a respondent can open a questionnaire and answer it while an author can either edit a questionnaire or view the responses and run general reports.

8. A software module as claimed in claim 6 or claim 7 wherein more than one type of questionnaire is provided.

9. A software module as claimed in 8 wherein two types of questionnaire are provided, a first questionnaire being a standard questionnaire which applies to anyone in an organisation whereas a second questionnaire is in a structured form such that the internal hierarchy of an organisation is taken into account such that specific questions can be mapped against specific respondents in that hierarchical structure.

10. A software module as claimed in 9 wherein the author of the second questionnaire first defines the questions to be asked and an entity structure defining those who are to participate in the questionnaire and then publishes the questionnaire.

11. A software module as claimed in claim 10 wherein during the publishing process the module checks that all business rules are met and questions and entity structure are locked down to prevent editing.

12. A. software module as claimed in claim 11 wherein all persons in the entity structure are informed by email that they have a questionnaire response to complete.

13. A software module as claimed in claim 12 in which the author can monitore the progress of all entities.

14. A software module as claimed in claim 13 with which an author can view, print or export any number of standard predefined reports of may create custom reports.

15. A software module as claimed in any one of claims 10 to 15 wherein the questionnaire has a real hierarchical/tree structure which can be built with many levels thereby creating the entity structure.

16. A software module as claimed in claim 15 wherein this entity structure can be used for workflow and business rule purposes as well as reporting.