Optional or N/A in Question

Created by Adam Vervaeke
Last updated: Sep 12, 2020 by Karla Melendez

You can now set Evaluation questions to Optional.  See below for more details.


FMI

This article assumes some familiarity with the Evaluator, Evaluator Templates, and Evaluation Categories.


Background 

Evaluation templates can be elaborate, spanning multiple categories and a great many questions. The flexibility and customizability place a great deal of power in your hands. 

However, when it comes time to run reports, you may find yourself wishing some questions weren't counted in the final tally. Let's explore. Imagine for a moment that your evaluation template requires you to score an agent on their efforts at listening.  For example: did the agent fully hear the customer out before speaking, or were they frequently interrupting the customer? 

Now imagine that you're listening to a conversation wherein the customer's cell phone was introducing serious audio quality issues.  The agent was trying to listen but kept inadvertently talking over the customer due to the audio problem.  In this case, the value of Optional would make sense.  The question doesn't apply to the call, thus you wouldn't want to count it against - or, as the case may be, for - the agent in your evaluation totals.

What Optional means

Allowing a value of Optional for a question or numerous questions can be quite useful.  The real world presents many use cases for this feature. 

Selecting Optional for a question presents a Not Applicable check box to the user completing the evaluation.  

  • If the user chooses to set the question to Not Applicable, that question will have no answer value of any kind (text, score, etc.)
  • The answer to this question will not count toward the evaluation total.
  • No matter what type of question it is (e.g. yes/no, multi-select), the Optional value will take precedence.


Walkthrough

1.  Sign in to your client admin portal.

2.  Click the Tools menu item, then Evaluations.

3.  You'll see a new browser tab open. From the menu that appears, click Form Templates. Next, either click Add if you're creating a new template, or click Edit to modify the template of your choice.  For this example, we'll edit an existing template.


4.  Now click Edit beside the question you want to modify.


5.  Once you're editing the question, you'll see the following check box near the bottom (you may need to scroll if your question is lengthy): Make this question optional.

Check this box to set the question to Optional, then click Update to apply your changes.  The evaluating user will now have the ability to click a Not Applicable check box beside the question, which will exclude it from the evaluation scoring.