QualityOne Vaults allow you to determine and conduct audits in a given period under a specified scope by creating audit program plans. As part of audit program planning, you can initiate, propose, and approve audit programs. Once an audit program plan is approved, Vault executes the audits against the plan. When complete, you can compare and review what was in the approved plan versus what was accomplished by your organization.
Depending on your Admin’s configuration, object, field, and section labels may appear differently than the labels mentioned in this article.
About Audit Program
You can initiate, propose, and approve audit program plans for execution for a determined period using the Audit Program object. During an initial process, the Audit Program record requires appropriate field values and proposed audits to continue to an in-approval process. You must create the appropriate Proposed Audit records to send for approval for the audit program plan. Once an Audit Program record enters a specified state, approvers must complete the approval task to initiate the audit creation planned for a future start date in an approval process.
Once the Proposed Audit records reach their planned audit creation date, the Proposed Audit records automatically enter an execution process and trigger Vault to create the matching Audit record for each Proposed Audit record through an entry action. You can then conduct, update, and track the execution of the Audits and its audit checklists and findings with the assigned team members for the related Proposed Audits (while the Audit record moves through its lifecycle) on the Audit Program record. You may also create any unplanned Audit record as part of the audit program planning process. You can track the progress of the actual Audit against the Proposed Audit as part of the audit program plan.
As an example, an audit planner needs to scope the next quarter’s audits for her organization. The audit planner first creates an Audit Program object record with the name “Audit Program Q4 2021”, filling out the field data that her organization has determined is necessary. She creates one (1) or more Proposed Audit related records, then populates the Proposed Audit records with more specific metadata. When Audit Program Q4 2021 eventually enters a specified state, for example, In Execution, Vault automatically creates an Audit object record for each Proposed Audit record in the program. These Audit records carry over data from their source Proposed Audit record.
Proposed Audits
Proposed Audit records represent the audits you plan within an audit program. When Vault creates Audit records, Vault copies certain data over from the source Proposed Audit record.
Vault may copy the following field values from the Proposed Audit record, if configured by your Admin:
- Auditee
- Planned Start Date
- Planned End Date
Vault also copies values for any fields with identical Name values on both the Proposed Audit and Audit objects.
Unplanned Audits
If configured by your Admin, you can manually create audits from the Audit Program record to account for unplanned audits not created by Audit Program Planning automation.
Creating an Audit Program
To create an Audit Program:
- Navigate to the Audit Program custom object tab or to Business Admin > Objects > Audit Programs.
- Click Create.
- Enter the Name.
- Select the Planned Start Date and Planned End Date.
- Click Save.
- Optional: In the proposed audits section, create one (1) or more related Proposed Audit records.
- Optional: In the unplanned audits section, click Create and add any Audit records that belong within this Audit Program but were not created by Audit Program Planning automation.
You can continue adding Proposed Audits and unplanned Audits after creating the Audit Program record.
Create Proposed Audits Action
The Create Proposed Audits action on the Audit Program object queries your Vault for applicable Organizations or Facilities and creates Proposed Audit records with pre-populated data, reducing the need for manual Proposed Audit record creation on the Audit Program.
Your Admin’s configuration determines the source object for the Proposed Audits (either Organization or Facility), the object type of the created Proposed Audit records (for instance, Internal or Supplier), and the scope of the created Proposed Audits. The scope of created Proposed Audits is determined by the lifecycle state and other data on the Organization or Facility records. For instance, an Audit Manager runs the Create Proposed Audits action on an Audit Program record in a Vault configured to create Proposed Audits from Supplier type Organization records that are in an Approved lifecycle state and exceed a certain risk threshold. Vault finds Organization records that meet the guidelines and evaluates if the date on the Organization is between the Planned Start Date and Planned End Date on the Audit Program record. If it is, then Vault selects the record for Proposed Audit generation.
When you execute the action, you may be prompted to provide Organization or Facility object field values on which to match. A typical configuration might prompt you to select a Country value, and create Proposed Audits for Organizations or Facilities with a Next Scheduled Audit Date between the Planned Start Date and Planned End Date on the Audit Program record.
If the Proposed Audits inherit cascading Team Roles from the Audit Team, those values transfer to the Proposed Audits created through this action. Vault assigns the User that is listed as Owner on the Audit Program record as the Owner of all the created Proposed Audits.
Running the action creates up to 500 Proposed Audit records. You can rerun the action to create additional records.
How to Execute an Audit Program Plan
To execute an Audit Program Plan:
- Navigate to the appropriate Audit Program.
- Review the proposed audits section to ensure all the applicable Proposed Audit records are created.
- Optional: Review the unplanned audits section to ensure all the applicable unplanned Audit records are created. You may add these records after executing the Audit Program record on an ad-hoc basis.
- Once the Audit Program record reaches the planned start date, Vault will create related Audit records for each Proposed Audit record within the Audit Program as part of a configured entry action.
- If configured, you can manually create related Audit records for each Proposed Audit record using the Create Audit Record action from the All Actions menu.
- Refresh your browser’s tab and review the related Audit section. You may start working with each related Audit record using the following general flow:
- Adding the applicable audit team members.
- Generating the appropriate audit checklist template records (Checklist Design records).
- Assigning the checklists to the team members based on the templates.
- Sending the audit for performance.
- Completing all assigned audit checklists with applicable audit findings.
- Creating an audit report at the end.
After conducting all Audits as part of the Audit Program plan and reaching the planned end date, you may complete the Audit Program record’s lifecycle to finalize all details and to prevent additional Audits or Proposed Audits from being created or linked. You may run reports to evaluate and compare the actual audit execution to the audit program plan for further assessment.