To create a new Instrument, click on Setup > Instruments. Click the blue + (plus) button on the right-hand side of the screen to create your new Instrument.

This brings up the New Instrument view, and you must complete this step to set up the overall Instrument before you can begin building out the questions and other elements. First, name your Instrument. You can also include a description, which will be visible in the Instrument list to aid in future navigation of configured Instruments.

We discuss each element of this view in the sections below. Once you have named the new Instrument, selected the Type, and selected or filled in any other desired fields, click the blue Save button to move to the next step.

Instrument Types

You must choose an Instrument type from the three choices in the drop-down. Which type you choose impacts some aspects of the instrument’s behavior, and influences functionality we’ll discuss later, such as scheduling and assignment of instrument responses. The three Instrument Types differ primarily by a combination of two factors: a) is the subject organization completing it or are they being assessed by an external party; and b) whether questions can directly reference elements of Standards you have set up within Fabric.

Options

You can select some, all, or none of the checkboxes under Options. Here’s what they do:

Require Completion: Prevents an Instrument response from being submitted unless all questions which are set as Required have been completed. When un-checked, a respondent can Submit the Instrument with blank answers to any question, but the progress measures shown to the respondent will still count Required fields to calculate percentage complete.
This is an option for all Instrument types.

Allow Self-Start: This allows a user with adequate permissions to select, begin, and complete an Instrument without it being Scheduled and Assigned to them.
This box appears if Instrument Type is set to Self Assessments, and only applies to this category.

Allow private responses: By default, Organization users with appropriate permissions can see responses while an Instrument response is in-progress, once it has been started and after a page with any inputs is saved. When this box is checked, only the assignee can see any part of the Instrument response until it is submitted. And while submitting the user completing the Instrument must un-check the “Private” box to enable Organization Staff to view the completed response.
This box appears if Instrument Type is set to Self Assessments, and only applies to this category.

Scoring

These Options enable the Instrument to utilize Ratings, which are globally configured under Setup > Ratings. Ratings are applied to referenced Standards criteria within the Instrument. The simplest Instrument design would use Ratings for every question, grading compliance against some or all parts of a Standard, applying the assigned numerical value for each Rating to the question and calculating rating for the Instrument as a whole.

Ratings

To configure Ratings in Fabric, go to Setup > Instruments. You’ll see a row of tabs at the top of the page; click on RATINGS.

This brings up the Rating Configurations view. Click the blue + (plus) button to add a new Rating set. This brings up the Rating Configuration view.

Give your Rating set a Name, then add Options to specify each individual qualitative rating (the text/name of each rating choice) and corresponding numerical score. You can select the checkbox “Exclude from Scoring” for any item which should not be calculated in the overall total and average. Once you’ve entered all desired information, click the blue Save button to save and return to the Ratings list.

The example shown above is a commonly used rating scale for assessing compliance against a given Standard, which includes the choices Exceeds, Meets, Partially Meets, Does Not Meet, Not Evaluated, with corresponding numerical scores of 4, 3, 2, 1 for the first four options and the Exclude from Scoring box selected for Not Evaluated (which prevents any non-applicable/unassessed item from lowering the overall average score).