Assessments Module
Intro
3B Onboarding comes with a built in module that lets non-admins create auto scored and evaluated questionnaires that can be used for candidate vetting, assessments and tests (including timed assessments), psychometric testing, surveys, feedback forms and much more. We have even noticed that some customers opt to use the assessments module to enable a guided interview process which enables recruiters to quickly add notes / score a candidate based on their responses in a Phone/Face to Face interview.
We call that entire module “Assessments” in short, as what it is best is to assess responses from external, internal, salesforce and non-salesforce users.
Creating an Assessment
Navigate to the 3B Onboarding application in the app launcher and then find the “Question Set” tab and click on it. Here, you will see a list of all of the assessments previously created.
To create a new assessment, click on the “New” button. A familiar *(link to article document packs) pop-up modal will be displayed with a step-by-step wizard guiding you in creating a new assessment.
When creating an assessment, the two fields that are recommended for you to set are the name of the assessment and something called “Finish Blurb”.
The Finish Blurb input field allows you to define some text that will be displayed to the user that completes the assessment successfully.
Supported Question Types
When creating a new question, you can select the type of the question from the “Response Type” field. Currently we support the following question types:
Text Area
This question type is the odd one. It is actually very simple – it lets the user completing the assessment to provide a response in plain text.
Options
This question type allows the user completing the assessment to select one or multiple options from a drop-down style input.
While creating a question of this response type, you will be required to also add options against the question, and alternatively, you can enter a number of minimum/maximum selections allowed from users that are completing the assessment.
This is useful for example when you need to allow completing users to add at least 2 selections and no more than 3 for a given question.
Multi Checkbox
This question type works similarly to Options where question options must be defined and minimum/maximum selections are also applicable. The main difference is that using this input type, users can see all of the options laid out in a list, rather than having to click on a field to view options. Furthermore, you can create longer options without worrying about text getting clipped by the user’s device.
Creating a New Question
When creating a new question, you will be presented with a few fields that let you configure the assessment question.
Here is a table of what these options do to the assessment that is rendered to users:
| Option | Description |
| Question Label | This is the short label of the question. Often this is something like “Q1 – Some Label” and can be used to group questions. |
| Response Type | This determines how the engine will render the question in the front end. |
| Question Details | This is a long description that supports image inputs. You can provide the full question detail in this field, add images, links and style your question to make the most impact. |
| Question Set | This is the link to the question set that “owns” this question |
| Passing Score | This is the minimum score required to “pass” this question |
| Maximum Score | This is the maximum allowed score. Used only with text inputs and validates that a reviewer of a text area input cannot assign a score over what is allowed to prevent skews in data. |
| Minimum Selections | This is the number of selections required for selection based inputs. This does NOT override the “Required” flag – a question can be optional, however if an input is registered, it must be of the number of selections set in this option |
| Maximum Selections | Similar to Minimum Selections, this option validates how many options are selected in an options based question |
| Required | This flag defines whether or not the user is required to provide some sort of input to the question |
| Template | This flag lets you define a question as a “template” so it can be re-used |
Creating a Question from Template
When creating/editing an assessment, the wizard will display a list of questions defined as templates. You can pick one or multiple question templates and add them to your question set.
Managing Response Options
A score-based question has multiple options and their order can be changed during and after creating the question. Use the embedded 3B provided component to manage the question options order or add automations to write to the b3o__Order__c field in order to change the order of the options.
Weighted Response Options
When creating question options, you may have noticed that there is an input available for you to enter a number between -999 and 999 labeled “Score”. This allows you to assign a score to the question, should it be selected by the user completing the assessment.
The score assigned against the question option will get evaluated against the Passing Score that was defined on the Question. If multiple options are selected, their scores are added up.
Distribution
Preview Button
During the process of building a new assessment, you can preview what the final output would look like by clicking on the “Preview” button on the Question Set. This will open a read-only version of the assessment.
Document Assignments
You can distribute Assessments through the Document Assignment*(link to article) module or using your own build automations.
If you choose to use your own mechanism for distributing Assessments (such as through Email, Community Embed, Website Embed, Salesforce Record Action etc.) remember that the page/component needs to pass some parameters to the assessment scripts in order for them to do their job.
| Parameter | Required | Usage |
| uId | true | This is a contact Id. This will help us relate the Candidate Scorecard created at the end of the assessment to the contact intended to complete the assessment |
| qsId | true | This is a Question Set Id. This will help us load the questions/options for the assessment |
| jobId | This is the Id of a 3B Job*(link to article) record. If provided, we will create a new 3B Application and link it to the 3B Job | |
| jb | This is the Job Board*(link to article) that the newly created 3B Application will be linked to in order to help us identify where it came from | |
| docId | This is the Id of a Document*(link to article) record. If provided, we will create a new Document Submission*(link to article) record once the assessment is successfully completed | |
| applicationId | This is the Id of a 3B Application record. If provided with a docId parameter, we will link the document submission to a specific 3B Application so we can easily identify what application is the assessment related to. |
Candidate Scorecard
When an assessment is successfully completed, a new record will be created in the system to link the Question Set (assessment), Contact (candidate) and their responses.
The candidate scorecard rolls up the total score across all of the questions for the assignment.
Architecture
The assessments module is highly customizable and extensible. If you have access to developers (or you are a developer yourself), you can have a peak at the visualforce page “JobApplication.page” that comes with 3B Onboarding.
We have designed the front end to work like a plugin - a decision that allows developers to embed the assessment module in other applications and websites. Let’s have a break down of what happens when this pre-configured page is loaded:
Communication
Communication is established either through AJAX or REST API. If the controller b3d.GlobalRemotinRouter is found on the page, the plugin will communicate through the built in secure salesforce communication protocols. Alternatively, if you decide to embed this plugin externally to salesforce, the communication plugin will fall back to REST API communication which is un-authenticated and depends on a Public Site Guest User*(link to setting up sites).
Web Components
We use standard web components*(link to external article) for multiple things, but most importantly, to create the different types of inputs (Text Area, Drop Down, Checkboxes etc.). You can introduce your own input types or extend/update existing web components by replacing with your own implementations.
So, for example, if you wanted to introduce a Likert Table Scale as an input, you can create your own web component, embed it in a new visualforce/html page and introduce a new option in the picklist “Response Type”.
Dependencies
Assessments are dependent on the “remoteUtils” plugin that manages communication with salesforce.
You may also notice a snippet of code that emits an an iframe event with the identifier “3bonboarding_questionSet” – this is used within the context of MyDocuments*(link to MyDocuments) to allow the modal with the assessment to automatically close.