Managing Questions and Sections in the Question Library

Questions and sections are used in questionnaires that you use in the supplier qualification and supplier evaluation processes. In supplier qualification, for example, you can identify potential suppliers or you can collect information from your suppliers to verify in regular intervals if they still fulfill your requirements. In supplier evaluation, you can send questionnaires to appraisers within your enterprise and ask them to provide feedback on your suppliers.

To build questionnaires, you first create a number of questions. For some question types you provide answer options that are associated with scores. In addition, you create sections that allow you to structure your questionnaires.

You create and store all questions, answer options, and sections in the question library. You can then build questionnaires by adding questions and sections that you created in the question library.

Note Note

There are two separate Question Libraries, one for supplier qualification and another one for supplier evaluation. Questions stored in one question library cannot be used in the other business process.

End of the note.

Procedure

Creating Questions

Under Questionnaires, click on the service Question Library.
Before you start creating questions and sections, we recommend that you create groups on the Groups tab. Groups are helpful for keeping a better overview of the questions and sections within the question library. When you assign a group to a question, for example, the name of the group is displayed in the question list, next to the question name. You can then sort the list of questions by question group. Note that groups are only visible in the question library and in the translation application, but not in questionnaires.
Under Questions, create a question and select one of the following question types:
- Yes/no question
- Single-answer question
  On the Answer tab, you can formulate several answer options from which recipients can select one.
- Multiple-answer question
  On the Answer tab, you can formulate several answer options from which recipients can select one or more answers. You must at least provide two answer options.
- Free-text question
- Certificate question
  With this question type, you can ask recipients to submit certificates (for example, ISO certificates) and to specify the validity period and issuing authority of the certificate.
  
  You can assign certificate types to certificate questions.
  
  If you have assigned a certificate type to a certificate question, and if the same certificate type is assigned to a purchasing category as well, the following applies:
  
  Suppliers of that purchasing category who provide certificates in response to the certificate question see them on the sell side of SAP Supplier Lifecycle Management in the Certificates overview.
  
  Note that certificate questions can only be used in the supplier qualification process, not in the supplier evaluation process.
Note
- When you create the answer options for single-answer and multiple-answer questions, you can use arrows to move the answer options up and down. In the case of single answer questions this is useful, for example, to avoid that users can conclude from the sequence of the answer options whether an answer leads to a high or low score. (Multiple-answer questions do not have scores.)
- On the Answers tab, 5 empty lines are available by default where you can enter your answer options. The system deletes empty lines when you save your answer options. If you have deleted text from an existing answer option, note that the corresponding line will also be deleted. This also affects the translations for this answer option.
End of the note.
On the Question Details tab, enter a name, a text, and an explanation for your question. The names of questions are not visible for the recipients of questionnaires. Note that within a question library, the names of questions, sections, and groups must be unique.
You can set questions to inactive if you do not want them to be available for being included in questionnaires. You can do this, for example, if you are still working on a question. If you set a question to inactive that is already used in a questionnaire, the questionnaire cannot be sent to recipients.

Define for each question whether the recipients of the question can submit attachments and text comments, and whether submitting attachments is mandatory or optional. Enabling attachments and comments from recipients is possible as listed below, depending on the question type:

Question Type	Attachments from Recipient	Comment from Recipient
Certificate question	Attaching certificates to certificate questions is always enabled, you cannot do this manually.	Yes
Yes/No question	Yes	Yes
Single-answer question	Yes	Yes
Multiple-answer question	Yes	No
Free-text question	Yes	No

To provide information to users working in the question library, you can create an internal note. This information is not visible for the recipients of the questionnaires.
On the Answers tab, that is available for single-answer questions and for multiple-answer questions, enter the texts for the answer options. See also section Associating Scores with Questions.

Defining the Translation of Questions

To define whether your question (including the answer options) is to be translated and into which languages, proceed as follows:

Next to Status of All Translations and the status indicated, click Set Languages.
Add the languages into which you want the question to be translated.
For each translation language, change the status to To be Translated. You can change the translation status at any time. For example, if you want a question to be translated into an additional language at a later stage, add the language and set the status to To Be Translated. You can also remove translation languages, independent of the overall translation status of a question.
If for at least one translation language the status is To be Translated, the Status of All Translations is To be Translated.

Note Note

When working in the question library, you always create and see the questions in their original language. To display the translations, you can use the translation application. To do this, you need the Translator (/SRMSMC/TRANSLATOR) role.

End of the note.

Associating Scores with Questions

For single-answer questions and yes/no questions, you must provide answer options with corresponding scores. Note the following about scores:

Question Type	Related Scores
Certificate question	For certificate questions, you cannot define scores manually. If recipients submit a certificate with their answer, the system assigns the score 100 to the answer. If they do not submit a certificate, the score assigned is 0.
Yes/No question	When creating a question, you must define whether “Yes” or “No” is the preferred answer to your question. The scores associated are the following: 100 for the answer that you prefer 0 for the answer that you do not prefer
Single-answer question	The score values for single selection questions range between 0 and 100 and are distributed in a linear way: By default, five empty rows for answer options are displayed, and the corresponding default scores are 0, 25, 50, 75, and 100. You can modify the scores. Note the following: One of the scores must be 100 and one must be 0. If you delete or add answers, the score distribution is no longer linear. If you want the distribution of the scores to be linear again, you can recalculate the scores.
Multiple-answer question	You cannot assign scores to multiple-answer questions.
Free-text question	You cannot assign scores to free-text questions.

Adding Attachments As a Questionnaire Manager

If adding attachments to questions is enabled in Customizing, you can do so on the Upload Attachments tab. This is useful if you want to provide additional information about the question to the recipient of the questionnaire. You can use the arrows to change the sequence of the attachments. Note that, once you have uploaded an attachment, you can no longer change the file name or description.

Copying Questions

Copying questions is useful if you want to take over data from existing questions. By default, the name of a newly created question starts with “Copy of”. You can change all data belonging to a copied question, except the question type. You can change the question and answer texts, for example, and all attributes. When you copy questions for which translated texts exist, the translated texts are also copied. The translation status of the copied questions is To Be Translated.

Note Note

If you copy a question that has the status Inactive, the copies created for the question automatically receive the status Active.

End of the note.

To copy a question, select the question in the question library and click Copy.

Deleting Questions

You can delete questions that you no longer want to use. However, if you delete a question that is still used in a questionnaire, the question is not automatically removed from the questionnaire. Instead, when saving the questionnaire the user is informed that the questionnaire contains an obsolete question and can therefore not be sent to recipients.

Creating Sections

On the Sections tab, you can create sections to structure questionnaires. Sections are visible to the recipients of questionnaires. You can, for example, create sections to cluster your questions by specific topics, such as the product quality achieved by your suppliers.

You enter a name, a title, and an explanation for your section, you can have the section title and explanation translated, and you can deactivate the section. The names of sections are not visible to the recipients of questionnaires.

General Handling of the Question and Section Lists

For general information about working with the question list and the section list, such as personalizing, filtering, and sorting, search for the keywords SAP List Viewer in Web Dynpro in the documentation of SAP NetWeaver under http://help.sap.com.

More Information

Managing Supplier Certificates

Availability of Translations of Questions and Sections

Scores and Weightings

Translating Questions and Sections

Exporting and Importing Questions and Sections

Offline Content of the Question Library

Required Roles

You have been assigned the Questionnaire Manager (/SRMSMC/QUESTIONNAIRE_MANAGER) role.

Required Business Functions

Depending on the business process for which the question library is used, either of the following business functions must be activated:

SLC, Supplier Qualification (Buy Side) (SMC_SUPPL_QUA_BFW_1)
SLC, Supplier Evaluation (SMC_SUPPL_EVAL_1)

Customizing

Depending on the business process for which the question library is used, the following activities are relevant in Customizing for SAP Supplier Lifecycle Management:

Supplier Qualification

Buy Side Supplier Qualification Basic Settings for Supplier Qualification :
- Create Question Library for Supplier Qualification
- Define MIME Types for Attachments
- Define Maximum Size for Attachments
Buy Side Supplier Qualification Number Ranges for Supplier Qualification . Here, the number ranges for questions, sections, and groups used in supplier qualifications must be defined.

Supplier Evaluation

Buy Side Supplier Evaluation Basic Settings for Supplier Evaluation .
- Create Question Library for Supplier Evaluation
- Define MIME Types for Attachments
- Define Maximum Size for Attachments
Buy Side Supplier Evaluation Number Ranges for Supplier Evaluation . Here, the number ranges for questions, sections, and groups used in supplier evaluations must be defined.