Description on "Factor for overall effectiveness" does not show up in assessment.

poojithaven · 3 weeks ago

Description configured on "Factor for overall effectiveness" in RAM Control Assessment does not show up in assessment.

I have noticed if that if "Factor for overall effectiveness" selected is a group factor then individual manual factor description is showing up, However if "Factor for overall effectiveness" selected is a manual factor ,the description does not show up. Any way we can enable the description to show up?

Naveen20 · 3 weeks ago

This is a known behavioral nuance in ServiceNow's GRC Risk Assessment Module.

Why it happens:

When the "Factor for overall effectiveness" is set to a group factor, the assessment rendering logic iterates through the child (individual/manual) factors within that group and displays each child factor's description in the assessment UI. However, when a standalone manual factor is directly selected as the "Factor for overall effectiveness," the assessment renderer treats it as the top-level container itself rather than a displayable child item — so its description gets skipped during rendering.

Essentially, the assessment UI is designed to show descriptions at the child factor level within a group, not at the top-level factor reference itself.

Recommended workaround:

The simplest and cleanest fix is to wrap your manual factor inside a group factor, even if it's the only child:

Create a new Group Factor (e.g., "Overall Effectiveness Group").
Add your existing manual factor as a child factor under that group.
On the Control Assessment definition, set the "Factor for overall effectiveness" to point to the new group factor instead of the manual factor directly.

This way the assessment rendering engine will iterate into the group, find your manual factor as a child, and display its description as expected — without changing any scoring logic.

Alternate:

You could look into customizing the assessment rendering by modifying the Assessment Formatter or adding a UI Policy / Client Script on the assessment form to programmatically pull and display the description from the sn_grc_factor record. However, this approach is more fragile across upgrades and less recommended than the group wrapper approach above.

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Naveen20 · 3 weeks ago

This is a known behavioral nuance in ServiceNow's GRC Risk Assessment Module.

Why it happens:

When the "Factor for overall effectiveness" is set to a group factor, the assessment rendering logic iterates through the child (individual/manual) factors within that group and displays each child factor's description in the assessment UI. However, when a standalone manual factor is directly selected as the "Factor for overall effectiveness," the assessment renderer treats it as the top-level container itself rather than a displayable child item — so its description gets skipped during rendering.

Essentially, the assessment UI is designed to show descriptions at the child factor level within a group, not at the top-level factor reference itself.

Recommended workaround:

The simplest and cleanest fix is to wrap your manual factor inside a group factor, even if it's the only child:

Create a new Group Factor (e.g., "Overall Effectiveness Group").
Add your existing manual factor as a child factor under that group.
On the Control Assessment definition, set the "Factor for overall effectiveness" to point to the new group factor instead of the manual factor directly.

This way the assessment rendering engine will iterate into the group, find your manual factor as a child, and display its description as expected — without changing any scoring logic.

Alternate:

You could look into customizing the assessment rendering by modifying the Assessment Formatter or adding a UI Policy / Client Script on the assessment form to programmatically pull and display the description from the sn_grc_factor record. However, this approach is more fragile across upgrades and less recommended than the group wrapper approach above.

poojithaven · 3 weeks ago

Thanks for the response