Questionnaire support in Exception Management via Smart Assessment

  • Release version: Zurich
  • Updated July 31, 2025
  • 2 minutes to read
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    Summary of Questionnaire Support in Exception Management via Smart Assessment

    The Smart Assessment feature enhances the Exception Management process within ServiceNow, allowing Remediation Owners to provide detailed context for Exception Requests. This capability enables Approvers to configure conditional questions, facilitating informed decision-making. With the recent updates, the Exception Management UI has improved insights directly within Change Approval records, streamlining the approval workflow.

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    Key Features

    • Advanced Questionnaires: Configure detailed questionnaires as part of Exception Management.
    • Conditional Questions: Allows Approvers to gather pertinent information tailored to specific situations.
    • Enhanced UI: Improved visibility in Change Approval records and an Approver landing page within the Security Exposure Management workspace.
    • Accessibility: Questionnaires are available in both Workspace and Classic User Interface, catering to various workflow needs.

    Key Outcomes

    These enhancements lead to a more efficient approval process, reduce manual efforts, and accelerate decision-making for exception requests. Enhanced collaboration between Vulnerability Management and Remediation teams is achieved through clearer communication and comprehensive justification of exceptions.

    Roles Required

    • Smart Assessment Template Reader: Allows admins to create and edit templates.
    • Smart Assessment Actor: Enables Remediation Owners and Admins to fill out questionnaires.
    • Smart Assessment Reader: Permits Approvers to read submitted questionnaire responses.

    Prerequisites

    The Smart Assessment plug-ins must be installed, as they are a dependency for the Vulnerability Response feature.

    Configure advanced questionnaires as part of the exception management process using Smart Assessment. This allows Remediation Owners to provide more detailed context for Exception Requests and enables Approvers to configure conditional questions to gather information for informed decision making.

    Note:
    Starting with v30.0 of Vulnerability Response, the Exception Management UI has been enhanced to provide improved insights directly within the Change Approval record, enabling approvers to quickly make informed decisions without navigating to related records. Additionally, an Approver landing page has been introduced within the Security Exposure Management workspace for all findings that introduces an improved table view with additional columns, offering better visibility and context. Together, these enhancements streamline the approval workflow, reduce manual effort, and accelerate decision-making for exception requests. For more information, see Exception Management Overview

    Roles required: Smart Assessment Template Reader: sn_vul_cmn.smart_assessment_template_manager (Vulnerability admin and Template reader) allows admins to create and edit templates.

    Smart Assessment actor: sn_vul_cmn.smart_assessment_actor enables you (Remediation Owners and Admins) to fill out the questionnaires/assessments.

    Smart Assessment reader: sn_vul_cmn.smart_assessment_reader enables you (Approver) to read the submitted questionnaire responses.

    Pre-requisite: The smart assessment plug-ins must be installed as the Smart Assessment is a dependency on Vulnerability Response.

    You can now configure questionnaires as part of the Exception Management process using Smart Assessment. It allows Vulnerability Admins/Manager to configure conditional questions to gather the right information needed for informed decision-making, while enabling Remediation Owners to provide more detailed context for exception requests. This improves collaboration between the Vulnerability Management and Remediation teams by streamlining the approval process and ensuring clarity and completeness of exception justifications.

    Questionnaires and smart assessments are accessible in Workspace as well as the Classic User Interface as some workflows still require the older style questionnaires, while the new assessment is more user friendly and is only supported in Workspace.

    In the Exception Management Configuration screen, you can now select the Assessment for Compensating Control, request exception and false positive records.
    Note:
    In case you chose to complete “Assessment to request exception” field, the system allows you to consider the smart assessment template, or else the classic questionnaires are considered.
    You can use the two options provided below: :
    • Smart Assessment: Manage the Questionnaires in Vulnerability Workspace.
    • Existing Questionnaire: You can access the existing questionnaire in both the Workspace and Classic experience.

    The above templates can be accessed/edited by the Smart Assessment Template Reader: sn_vul_cmn.smart_assessment_template_manager.