Audit Manager is supplied with a suite of ready-made audit templates. You can:
- use Activ’s templates as supplied; and/or
- take Activ’s templates as a starting point and adjust them to suit your organisation; and/or
- create your own templates from scratch.
This article deals with editing an existing template: A – Edit the basic properties; B – Edit or delete sections; and C – Edit or delete questions.
For guidance on creating a new template from scratch, see Create a New Audit Template.
Go to Audit Manager – Templates where all audit templates in your system are listed. Click on the template you want to edit:
The template’s Details tab opens.
Any changes you make to this audit template will automatically feed through to future audits and any audits that are ‘Scheduled’ but have not yet been started. To preserve the integrity of your audit records, audits using this template that are already ‘In Progress’, ‘Awaiting Review’ or have been ‘Reviewed’ will not be affected by any changes you make to the template.
You can create a PDF file of the current version of the audit template at any time by clicking on the PDF button.
A – Edit the basic properties of the audit template
The audit template’s basic properties are displayed in six fields in the upper portion of its Details tab. Click on Edit to access any of the six fields to change them:
An explanation of each of the fields is provided below:
Template Name* –a brief identifying name for the template. There is the option to provide further description/guidance in the Description field below.
Template Format* – ‘Simple’ or ‘Advanced’. Simple audit templates are suitable for “checklist form” style audits. Advanced audit templates are suitable for audits where evidence, including files and photos, and Improvement Logs may need to be added to individual responses. See Audit Templates – Overview.
Response Type* – the response type that will be available to auditors using this template. The options shown in this drop-down menu are configured via the Settings tab. See Audit Manager Settings – Configure Drop-Down Menus in Audit Manager.
Default?* – this field gives the option to decide which one of your audit templates appears at the top of the drop-down list when you schedule an audit. Typically, you would select ‘Yes’ in this field for the audit template that will be most commonly used. If you do not specify a default template (i.e. if you set all templates to Default = ‘No’) then when a new audit is scheduled the user will be forced to make a proactive selection of the appropriate audit template and accidental passive acceptance of a default template is avoided.
Disabled?* – the option to ‘hide’ an audit template to prevent future use. This field defaults to ‘No’, which means that the template will be available for selection when scheduling a new audit. If you select ‘Yes’ here, the template will not be available to select when scheduling audits. You may, for example, wish to disable a particular template during the period that you are creating it, to prevent others from selecting it before it has been finished. Later on, if you disable a template after it has been used, existing audits using that template will remain on record within the system but it will not be possible to select that template when scheduling a new audit. You can switch between ‘Yes’ and ‘No’ at any time to suit your needs.
Description – an optional field to provide supplementary detail/guidance on when or in what circumstance this audit template should be used. This information is displayed when an audit is being scheduled to help ensure appropriate template selection.
Click on Save to save your changes to the audit template’s basic properties.
B – Edit or delete sections
To delete a section, click on the red cross to its right:
Note that deleting a section cannot be undone. The section and all the questions within that section will be permanently deleted.
To edit any section, click on the Edit (pencil) icon to its right:
The Edit Section screen opens:
Edit the Section Name* as required.
Change the position of the section in the template using the Comes After field. Sections are automatically assigned a number, according to the sequential position of the section in the template. When you move a section the sections are automatically re-numbered.
Remember to click on Save to save your edits.
C – Edit or delete questions
To delete a question, click on the red cross to its right:
To edit any question, click on the Edit (pencil) icon to its right:
The Edit Question screen opens:
Edit the question text and any associated details. An explanation of the options is provided below:
Section* – the name of the section the question belongs to. To move the question to a different section, select the target section from the drop-down menu.
Comes After – shows the current position of the question within its section. To change its position, select the target position from the drop-down menu.
Criteria – displays the Criteria that this question is auditing against. Change the Criteria by clicking on the magnifying glass icon to the right of the field to open a picker where you can select from the available list of Criteria. The Criteria shown in the picker list are configured via the Settings tab. See Audit Manager Settings – Configure Drop-Down Menus in Audit Manager. Clear the Criteria field by clicking on the white eraser icon next to the magnifying glass.
Question Text* – make any changes to the question text here
Guidance Notes – change the guidance notes relating to this question that you wish to provide to auditors here.
Reference Material section (Advanced audit formats only) – any links to relevant reference material that you wish to provide to the auditor (e.g. a process or procedure) are displayed in this part of the page:
Delete any Reference Material by clicking on the red cross to its right.
Add Reference Material by clicking on Add Reference Material to open a window where you can create a link to files or pages within Activ (depending on which other Activ modules you use) or to any external URL (e.g. to files stored in a web-based document management system). When you link to material within other areas of Activ such as a Process or a File, the link is dynamic: when the audit template is used it will always reference the current version of that item at the point that the audit is started. Once an audit is started, the items referenced in that individual audit become frozen at the version that was current at the time the audit was started. In this way you can be confident of the reference material’s validity whenever an audit is conducted.
To change the order of the Reference Material, hover your mouse over the Re-order icon to the left of the link, click, then drag and drop to the desired location:
Remember to click on Save to save your edits.
