What is the difference between Survey and Assessment?

[jayachandran]

I want to know what is the difference between Surveys and Assessments? Which one is legacy and which is new? If both are new, what are the uses cases of both ?

I have read the Wiki articles but do not understand the difference since both seems to be sharing some common tables. When do you use Survey and when Assessment?

http://wiki.servicenow.com/index.php?title=Survey_Management#gsc.tab=0

Assessments - ServiceNow Wiki

[bernyalvarado]

Hi,

This is a great question. The first part to understand is that Survey Management has two versions. The older one which is called Legacy Survey and the current one which has been out already for a while (The difference between the two can be found here: Survey Management ). Having said that... there's a small difference between Survey Management and Assessments. The way the official documentation describes it is the following:

Assessments
Use assessments to evaluate, score, and rank records from any table in the system.
You can assess projects that executives want to evaluate for effective management, or rate and compare a vendor's goods and services. Use assessments to send custom questionnaires to selected users or write scripts that query the database directly. You can then compare assessment results for the records using unique graphical views designed to highlight key performance information. Share an assessment between ServiceNow instances by exporting and importing the assessment as an XML file.

Survey Management
The Survey Management application allows you to create, send, and collect responses for basic surveys.

The key difference is that assessments are more of a generic use case while survey management is thought to be very specific scenario of collecting feedback from an end user. Yet, these are often seen as the same and do have some important overlap as these share some common tables

Note: Because surveys use the same tables and other back-end components as assessments, you may see assessment elements such as table and field names in certain places throughout the survey feature.

I hope this helps!

Thanks,

Berny

[bernyalvarado]

One additional comment... the following thread is quite rich on describing ins/out of survey management and could be helpful:

Re: Survey Management and data gathering

Thanks,

Berny

[darrenwells]

Hi there, for the current supported releases, you are better to use the Release specific docs sites under: docs.servicenow.com.

In versions earlier than Istanbul, there was certainly some overlap, but this has now been enhanced and Assessments very specifically relates to Risk.   This means that both terms are still current (neither is legacy) but now have more distinct clarity and don't share tables.   The following links should provide more detailed understanding:

Survey Management

and

Assessments

However, in a nutshell, Surveys have the broader use case and are more commonly used.   This is the more familiar definition (i.e. seeking feedback from customers).     Links to the survey application may be from multiple sites, most commonly the services portal or via email.   Surveys are generally in tables extended from the task_survey table.

Assessments now have a narrower use case, and are part of the Governance, Risk and Compliance application (which I think has separate licensing).   The use case around assessments is basically the formal 'assessment' of a Risk.

Hope this helps