Action Audit updates and changes

A new, fourth auditor selection strategy was added - Random excluding the leader. This is a common case where the auditor should be someone from the group of auditors but not the area leader. Previously, this was handled by excluding the leader from the draw, which could be cumbersome. The new strategy simplifies audit scheduling.

A change was made to include all types of audits in the LPA Report generation: Standard Audit, Process Audit, and Product Audit. Previously, only standard audits launched from the schedule were considered.

To better visualize which audits are included in the LPA report generation, the (LPA) suffix has been added in the global filter to each of the mentioned audit types.

A fix to display the alternative audit question number on the audit view was implemented. The information was previously omitted.

Previously, the system log included changes made by users and background processes related to actions, action plans, audits, Kaizen ideas, and engineering changes. Now, it also logs events related to the following objects: Action Plan Template, Checklist, Audit Zone, Auditor Group, and Audit Schedule. Additionally, the operation filter has been improved with specific entries such as Acceptance or Audit finish.

As the number of audit zones increased, the Audit Schedule and Audit Results Report views became significantly slower. The implemented change has reduced the loading time of these two views by approximately 15-20 times.

The Pulse application now includes a history of operations performed within an activity. To see the history, go to the activity details view and select the Activity History option from the context menu.

Good news for companies maintaining their infrastructure on Microsoft Azure or using user authentication via Microsoft Entra ID. It is now possible to integrate login to Action Audit with the Microsoft's solution. For more information, please contact Action Audit Helpdesk.

The user listing was divided into three separate lists with different data ranges and column layouts:

[1] Active users - the default list that includes active and blocked users, as they are also treated as active except they cannot log into the system.

[2] Archived users - a list that includes archived users. An additional column showing the archive date has been added to the table.

[3] All users - a list aggregating all users who have ever been added to the system and not deleted.

Previously, links to manage rating scales and question categories were only available in the checklist edit form, which caused navigation issues. After the change, managing these objects is now easily accessible from the Other Settings screen.

The Questions Impact Report has been transformed into the The Most Difficult Questions Report, and as the name suggests, it contains a summary of the most difficult questions (up to 25) in a given period. Additionally, it is possible to generate the report based on data from more than 1 checklist, and if questions match between lists, their results are appropriately grouped in the report.

In response to the demand for the functionality of registering near miss events, the Quick Kaizen module has been renamed to Submissions Module and expanded to allow for the registration and handling of submissions other than Kaizen innovations. It is now possible to report Quick Kaizen innovative ideas and near miss events.

Throughout the system - both on the Web Platform and in the Pulse app - significant changes have been made, the most important of which are:

[1] The module name has changed from Quick Kaizen to Kaizen & Submissions, and other terminology previously strictly associated with Kaizen ideas has also been modified.

[2] The global filter has been introduced in the module, similar to the one known from audits module, containing 2 options: Quick Kaizen and Near Miss Event.

[3] The numbering of ideas remains unchanged, while near miss events are assigned numbers starting with the prefix NM- (Near Miss).

When exporting the Audits Results Report to an XLSX file, an issue occurred where the global filter settings were not taken into account, resulting in a report always including all audit areas. The issue has been fixed.

With the increased use of advanced action plan structures, especially nested plans, there has been a need to easily distinguish top-level action plans from nested plans, which are by definition part of a larger whole and usually do not represent the complete set of activities within a given project.

Therefore, on the list of action plans, the scope of Ongoing action plans has been split into 2 scopes: Ongoing action plans and Ongoing action plans, including nested ones.

One of the options when saving an action plan template is Activity's duration. Selecting it should cause the action duration from date to date to be saved, as well as the start shift time relative to the start of the action plan. However, the latter information was not saved, which resulted in setting the same start date for all actions when applying the template, regardless of the original settings in the source plan. The change introduced fixes the described error.

Date and time formats are now related to the country of the client's headquarters. Previously, they were tied to the language, which was a problem especially in the case of English, for which the date format in the US is different than in other countries.

The ability to register from 12 new countries has been added: Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Chile, Indonesia, Kazakhstan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, The Philippines, Thailand, and Vietnam.

This function allows you to enter information into the system about a user's absence (from date to date) during which his/her duties will be taken over by another person.

More precisely, once the absence begins, open activities are assigned to the alternate, and all audits drawn at that time are also assigned to the designated person. Once the absence ends, the reverse occurs, i.e. all unfulfilled activities are reassigned to the original owner.

To properly inform coworkers about an absence, there is an "X" in the upper right corner of the person's photo, and a bubble informing until when the person will be absent.

The new function allows you to quickly fill in the empty cells of the persons responsible for the activities. The function is especially useful when you add multiple activities for which the same person is responsible. In this case, just click on the button with the roller icon, and all empty cells will be filled with the name of the selected person.

A feature that allows users to define up to 10 custom columns within an action plan has been available in Action Audit for quite some time. However, it was fraught with some inconvenience - once the order of columns was set, it could not be changed later and sometimes users had to delete custom columns and create them anew.

Since version 2.24, the order of custom columns can be modified freely. They can also be moved in front of fixed columns: Subject-Description-Resolution.

Several changes and improvements related to the creation of templates on the basis of action plans have been introduced. First of all, the ability to overwrite the parameters of an existing template has been added, which allows you to make new revisions of the template specifications without unnecessary creation of a copy. In addition, the distribution and descriptions of checkboxes in the template saving window have changed, and, more importantly, the parameter Responsible was split into 2 individual parameters Action plan owner i Responsible for the action plan.

In the list of audits and the audit start screen in the Pulse application, information about the audit layer number was presented: L1, L2, L3, L4.

The function of marking an audit as not performed has been implemented in its entirety in the mobile app (previously not available), and on the Web it has been expanded to include the ability to indicate the reason for the audit not being performed.

Dictionary of thereasons for audit not being performed is available through an internet platform in the group Audits throught the link Other settings. With at least 1 reason entered, when you select the Mark as unconfirmed option the auditor can choose 1 of the available reasons or leave the selection blank, as providing a reason is not required at this point.

On both the web platform and mobile app, the ability to write out nonconformities in greater detail has been introduced. By default, after answering No or any other answer whose value is less than 100%, the auditor has at his disposal 1 field in which he can include both a description of the nonconformity itself and suggestions for further action.

The change introduced allows the auditor to enter in 3 separate fields: Description of the discrepancies , Description of the corrective action i Description of the corrective measure.

On the part of one of the companies using Action Audit, there was a request for a feature to block the uploading of images of inconsistencies that had been used previously, such as during a previous audit.

Thus, in the organization settings a configuration switch has been introduced to prevent multiple uploads of the same image during an audit, and its use has an effect on both the web platform and the mobile application.

Initially, each action plan has predetermined column names in the action table, regardless of whether it is a general plan, a post-audit plan or a plan for implementing a Quick Kaizen idea or engineering change. The introduced change modifies the column names in the action table for the Quick Kaizen idea implementation plan as follows: Topic -> Problem description, Description -> Solution, Solution -> Actions.

Focusing on the development of the mobile application for audits, the Corrected immediately function was omitted from the web platform. It has now been added and auditors can enter information about the implementation of an immediate correction during the performance of an audit via WWW.

After entering a list item, the user can navigate to other objects by swiping the screen left (to the previous one) and right (to the next one). The function has been implemented on the following lists of: activities, action plans, Kaizen ideas, notifications and messages.

In February, a function of marking an activity as unexecuted was introduced. Its purpose is to distinguish completed activities from those that for some reason (change in requirements, adjustment of scope, etc.) were not completed. As a result, the unexecuted activity was presented in green and with the slider set to 0%. Therefore, at first glance, it was difficult to distinguish between unexecuted and 100% completed activities.

The introduced change alters the color of the activity marked as unexecuted to gray.

In a situation where a user tries to provide an "out of order" evaluation, e.g. evaluates 2.7, when 2.6 is not completed, after moving the evaluation slider, the section of the first unentered evaluation opens. In the given example, 2.6 would open. This error has been fixed.

Sorting and pagination in the list of all audits incorrectly redirected user to the list of open audits. This error has been fixed.

A brand new Action plans module has been introduced in the Action Plan Pulse mobile application. Previously, in Pulse, a user could work on assigned tasks and create new action plans. After creation, the action plan was saved in the database and was fully available on the web platform, but there was no direct access to it from the mobile application.

As a result of the introduced functionality, almost all functions concerning general action plans (those with the AP- prefix) available via the WWW have been mapped in the mobile application. Currently, the user has access to the following functions:

- browsing the list and details of action plans together with the list of actions,

- creating new action plans,

- adding, modifying and removing an action from an existing action plan,

- adding and removing comments and attachments,

- managing the action plan, including: changing the column layout, pausing, resuming, hiding sensitive content, and even deleting the entire plan.

In addition, the list of plans includes a text search engine and a set of filters that make it easier to find the right action plan.

The bug fix for the missing audit question number in the corrective and remedial acitivities section of audit reports. The correction was applied to the reports: simple, full and comparative.

As the software develops, the number of organizational settings increases, which led to the overcomplicating of the organization settings view. Therefore, we decided to create a separate screen where global parameters are set.

The report generates a summary of activity due date adjustments for a given period in the form of a chart and a details table. The table contains the following columns: Date and time of change, Person changing the date, Action plan number, Activity number, , For what date and Number of days.

This long-awaited feature allows authorized users to create individual rating scales for audit questions, which are then assigned to checklists.

The score scale consists of one or more label-value options. The main requirement is that the value is within a 0 to 100 range.

As not all customers using Action Audit are willing to use an external service such as OpenAI API to obtain support from artificial intelligence, we have exposed a configuration parameter that allows blocking access to AI functions for all users. The parameter switch is located in Organization Settings.

The limit of photos that can be attached to one audit answer has been increased from 3 to 10. If more than 3 photos are added, a left-right scrollbar is shown.

The appearance of the registration, login, password reset and account unlock forms has been completely changed. We think it looks more modern now.

Additionally, the sign up form now allows you to specify the type of activity carried out by the registered organization. Currently, a user can adjust the initial configuration (available immediately after registration) for the following industries: production, automotive, hospitality, retial and other types of businesses.

The ability to attach a Gantt chart to the XLSX action plan export file has been introduced. Now the XLSX export has 2 parameters: 1. Attach Gantt chart (yes/no) and 2. Attach images (yes/no).

So far, question categories were permanently defined in the system. For most types of audits, the "General" category was the only one available, and for ISO, VDA or 5S audits, question categories resulting from the standards were used.

The new feature introduces the ability to create your own question categories for audit types that allow that. The link to the category list is placed above the audit type field in the checklist edit form.

When defining the audit schedule within an auditors group, a user can exclude one or more areas from the draw, the same way as auditors are excluded. Nothing changes in the standard schedule edit form.

A layer filter has been added to filters available in the "Auditor Dilligence Report". This has improved the report's usability, especially for layered process audits.

So far, on the web platform, editing organizational parameters related to audits was only available in the audit edition form and that caused some problems. Users without appropriate permissions were not able to set the values of organization parameters during an audit. The introduced change allows an auditor to edit the values of organization parameters directly in the audit view.

The ability to upload multiple attachments at once has been added. In this case, the attachment description field is inactive. The attachment description field can still be filled in when 1 file is indicated.

The Action Audit online platform and the Action Plan Pulse mobile application have been translated into 2 new languages. Chinese and Spanish have been added to the previously defined Polish, English and German.

Both in the mobile application and on the web platform, the ability to enter the so-called positive observation, i.e. a comment to the "Yes" answer, has been added. By default, the field for entering the observation is hidden and appears after clicking on "Add positive observation".

A positive observation does not initiate action in the corrective action plan but remains as information associated with the audit question.

A change in the method of logging into the system for the first time. The newly created user receives a message with a login (email) and password, the validity of which is limited in time, and what is more important, after logging in, the user only has access to the form for setting his own password. Previously, a newly created user had to go through a password recovery procedure, which was not intuitive for everyone. The new approach is easier and does not negatively impact safety.

Additionally, the new user form has been simplified. The fields: login, password and phone number have been removed, and by default, after creating a user, a message with a one-time password is sent. Additionally, the "Account business card" button has been renamed to "Password Reset" and its function has been changed accordingly.

The implemented change removes the requirement to attach a photo or other file to the "Recommendation" answer, even though such a requirement was set in the question configuration in the checklist. The requirement remains unchanged for negative answers, i.e. those with a result below 100%.

An activity declared as completed is subject to automatic acceptance after a set period of time. The parameter specifying the number of days for automatic acceptance is set in Organization parameters.

Information about the date and time of automatic acceptance of the completion of the activity has been added to the table of activities in the form of an additional icon and tooltip.

Right-left navigation has appeared in the views of audits, Quick Kaizen ideas and engineering changes, allowing you to move between individual objects without having to return to the list. Navigation takes into account the scope and sorting used on the list when entering the detailed view of a given object. The function is already known from the AP view and works the same as navigating between action plans.

In the checklist editing form, in place of defining the language version of questions, a new option has appeared, marked with a link with a processor icon. It allows all questions to be translated using artificial intelligence. Questions are translated from the language that the user has set in their profile to the language selected from the drop-down list. The entire operation, depending on the number of questions, takes from 10 to 30 seconds. It is important that after completing this process, press the "Update" button, which will save the data to the database.

The changes mainly concerned the XLSX file with a checklist template, which contains current data regarding, among others, lists of zones and auditors and therefore the template should be downloaded immediately before data import. Working with the current template and entering all the required data guarantees that the import will be successful. Additionally, the import view includes a graphical representation of the appropriate column arrangement of the imported file.

Added the ability to import a large number of audits from an XLSX file with a given format. This function may be useful when audit dates are so irregular that they (audits) cannot be planned using a schedule. The function is available by selecting New audit and then Import.

The users, employees and Pulse accounts import form has been thoroughly rebuilt, resulting in a dramatic improvement in usability.

In the upper part of the screen there is a table containing objects and (required or optional) parameters when importing data. The table is dynamic and changes its appearance as the user defines the data columns - changing the font to bold means that the required parameters of a given object have been defined.

Below there is the actual form for specifying which column contains each parameter, as well as for pointing to the XLSX file.

The option to enable two-factor authentication, the so-called 2FA, was implemented in the system. After selecting the option in the account settings view and applying the changes, the user will be presented with a QR code to scan in a two-factor authentication application, e.g. Google Authenticator.

A fix for discrepancies in action plan start, due and end dates between the single AP view and the list of action plans.

The layout and style of the app have changed significantly. We believe the new look is clearer and more uniform. Below are 5 screenshots showing different views of the app.

The feature is available in the activity menu in the action plan view. Thanks to it, the user can report to the action plan's owner that a given activity has not been performed for some reason, eg. it is no longer required or is inappropriate at a given stage.

An unexecuted activity has the same effect on the action plan as if it had been completed, i.e. it is possible to work on the following activities. Under certain conditions, it is possible to return the activity to execution.

The function allows an authorized user to mark on the annual view days when the organization is not working, e.g. on a long weekend or a scheduled shutdown. On these days, as well as on holidays and weekends, scheduled audits will not be issued. In the future, the organization's work and downtime configuration can also be used for other purposes.

A feature has been introduced that unifies the user interface language in the Action Plan Pulse mobile application and the web platform. Changing the language version in Pulse will immediately update the language on the web platform. This mechanism does not work the other way around. Additionally, changing the language to Web will not occur if more than one user account is associated with the Pulse application.

The missing Unexecuted audits count column in the Auditors' Diligence Report XLSX export file had been identified. The bug has been fixed and the column has been added.

To ensure data security, we have decided to increase the minimum requirements for user passwords. From now on, user passwords will have to be at least 8 characters long and contain at least: 1 small letter, 1 capital letter, 1 digit and 1 special character.

The first in a series of planned features using artificial intelligence. With the new function, based on the audit question and the auditor's observations, you will receive suggestions for five corrective actions.

See an example of the use of AI presented in the video.

A function allowing to attach graphics to tha action plan XLSX file has been introduced. The images are placed in the second tab of the exported spreadsheet.

The option of generating a file without photos remained. The graphic below shows the export confirmation window with 2 options to choose from: Yes, include images i No, export only data.

Previously, if a non-compliance was detected, the same - specified in the workflow configuration - person was always assigned to solve the task. The new feature allows the auditor to designate another person to resolve non-compliance.

As this option may be undesirable in some cases, we have introduced restrictions on access to it. Only users with the role of Administrator, Audit Manager or a set of roles Auditor + Lead Auditor can change the responsible person. Lead Auditor is a new role that has been to distinguish auditors who can change the responsible person from those who cannot.

So far, users who did not have the appropriate permission were unable to request a change in the assignee or a change in the activity due date. These 2 new features have been introduced in the mobile application.

Note: Users with the ability to directly change the values of the Assignee and Due date fields will not see links to open request forms.

This feature is addressed to future Action Audit users. At the following address https://app.action-audit.com/users/sign_up there is a form which allows one to create an account in the Action Audit system and test the solution for free for at least 30 days.