New: self-assessment in advance and follow-up audits with the deviations only
Two of September’s additions concern the core of IMS-Audit Cloud – the audit itself. One saves time before the audit, the other after it.
Self-assessment in advance: arrive prepared
Many audits start with a question the audited area can answer best itself: “How do you rate yourselves?” You can now ask this question before the audit – right in the system.
In the audit master data you name a person with a restricted login in IMS-Audit Cloud, set a deadline and click Request. The person receives an e-mail with the link to the portal, rates every relevant question of the catalogue from their point of view – in the catalogue’s rating scheme –, adds evidence as text and submits the self-assessment. After that it is read-only for them, and the auditors of the audit are notified via the bell icon.
This works for an audited area in your own organisation just as it does for a supplier: both use the restricted logins in IMS-Audit Cloud that are included in every plan.
How to use the self-assessment in the audit
In the question catalogue the self-assessment appears as a separate column next to your rating – with the auditee’s rating and their evidence text. There are three ways to adopt it:
- per question with the “Adopt” button right in the row,
- “Adopt open” – only for questions you have not rated yet; your own ratings stay untouched,
- “Adopt all” – for the whole catalogue, after a confirmation prompt.
Important: the self-assessment does not count towards the audit result and does not appear in the audit report. Only your rating counts – the self-assessment is your preparation, not the result. If the auditee should improve something, you reopen the self-assessment; they can then edit and submit it again.
In the audit overview, an audit with a submitted self-assessment carries a green badge behind its number (grey: requested, not yet submitted). The quick filter “Self-assessment” lists these audits, and the portal dashboard shows the auditee what is still open in the tile “My self-assessments”.
A practical tip: request the self-assessment only once the audit’s question catalogue is final – the self-assessment answers are attached to the questions.
Follow-up audit: only the questions that matter
After an audit with deviations, the verification comes round sooner or later. Until now that meant duplicating the audit and deleting everything that was unremarkable. There is now a dedicated command – “Create follow-up audit”, right next to “New” in the audit overview.
The follow-up audit carries over only the questions with a deviation, together with their chapters. You decide in the dialog what counts as a deviation:
- a rating below a selectable threshold,
- a triggering finding type, or
- an existing action on the question.
Chapters without such questions are dropped. Before you confirm, the dialog shows how many questions will be carried over.
In the follow-up audit’s question catalogue, every question shows the actions from the previous audit as a separate badge with a clock icon. One click opens the action – so you check effectiveness right where you are standing, with the action in front of you. The follow-up audit is linked to its predecessor but does not continue an audit series.
Also new
- Default rating scheme: in the settings you define company-wide which rating scheme is preselected when an audit question catalogue is created. It can still be changed per audit.
- Tidier toolbar: the buttons above the audit question catalogue now sit in labelled groups – the small heading on the frame tells you what the icons belong to.
- Archiving affects actions: when an audit is archived, its actions disappear from the overview, dashboard, portal and reminders. The “Archive” filter in the action overview still shows them.
Both features are available to all companies and are described in the in-app help. You will find more about the audit workflow on the page Plan & conduct audits and every change in the change log – or see both live in an appointment.