8.1.2 Working With Questions

Click the “manage questions” link to view and work with individual questions. The default view will likely be many pages long and the questions aren’t necessarily in any particular order. You may find it more useful to view questions using the tree view.

Under tree view, questions are displayed grouped by their categories.

Adding New Questions

The most efficient way to upload new questions yourself is to use a CSV file. From the grid view, click the CSV upload button. Each line of the file represents one question with the fields outlined in the table below. The fields allow you to determine how the question will look, where it shows up (under what category), what type of answers are allowed and how the answers will be scored.

Field number	Field name	Required	Explanation
1	text	yes	the question itself This field supports Markdown formatting. Please visit https://www.markdownguide.org/cheat-sheet/ for a quick reference to Markdown.
2	parent	no	the text of the parent question; this field is blank if it has no parent question
3	category	yes- if no parent	the category it belongs in; if the question has a parent, then leave this field blank and it inherits the category of the parent question
4	explanation required	no	Under what circumstances does the answer require an explanation? r = if answer is favorable; u = if answer is unfavorable; a = always; n = never
5	show if parent	no	y = if the answer to the parent question is favorable, then show this question (default); n = if the answer to the parent question is unfavorable, then show this question.
6	weight*	no	c = critical; h = high; m = medium (default); l = low; i = informational
7	allow explanation	no	true = allow users to type in an explanation; false (default) = no explanation allowed (does not override the “explanation required” field)
8	help text	no	text that will be displayed as help text for the question (recommended) This field supports Markdown formatting. Please visit https://www.markdownguide.org/cheat-sheet/ for a quick reference to Markdown.
9	answer response group	yes	the name of the answer response group for this question
10	documentation required	no	f = required when favorable only; u = required when unfavorable only; a = always required; n (default) = never required
11	allow documentation	no	true = allow documentation upload; false (default) = do not allow documentation upload (does not override the “documentation required” field)

The weight value is used to calculate the scores which are reported by Isora GRC’s reports module. The multiplier for the selected answer will be multiplied by the question’s weight value to determine the score for the question. The survey score is the cumulative total for all questions in that survey. The respective weight values are summarized in the table below.

Weight	Value
critical	10
high	7.5
medium	5
low	2.5
informational	0

To add a single new question to Isora GRC, you can use the “add a new question” box. Fill in the fields and click “save.”

Each question must have either a category, or a parent, but not both. Some fields are only relevant based on how you answer other fields. If the field is irrelevant, then it is ignored. For instance, if you manually enter a question with no parent, then the “show if parent” field is ignored.

Allowing users to upload documentation

You may wish to allow users to upload documentation to support their answer. This documentation will be stored in the cloud and later you can retrieve it when you view the completed assessment. You can choose under what circumstances users are allowed to or required to supply documentation.

Editing existing questions

To edit an existing question, you can click the text of the question itself. This changes the “add a new question” dialog into an edit dialog.

You can see a little bit more detail if you click the pencil icon next to the question. The resulting window allows you to view and edit “help text,” which is some extra information you can provide along with the question to make it easier to answer. When users are filling out surveys, they can click a button next to the question to view the help text.

Both the text of the question itself and the help text field support Markdown formatting. Markdown is a lightweight markup language that allows you to add some formatting like numbered lists or include a link to a URL. For more information about Markdown, please visit https://www.markdownguide.org/cheat-sheet/ .

You can also view the revision history for the question. Each time you change a question, you can’t just overwrite the old question, because it might have already been used in a survey that was run in the past. If a question does have revisions, Isora GRC will keep track of which version of it was used in each survey that included it.

Each time you change an existing question, you are required to record an entry in the change log.

Next: 8.1.3 Working With Question Lists