This article will detail the functionality of OnTrack Actions. You can also download a step-by-step guide here.
How Do They Work?
- Required Corrective Actions
Required Corrective Actions, where utilized, must be entered by checklist users before they may submit the checklist. - Read-only Actions
Read-only Actions are informational, and visibility-restricted to those with access to the checklist instance, submitted checklist report, and the new downloadable PDF Report. - Disabled Corrective Actions
Read-only Action overrides allow the checklist user to decide whether or not the checklist action or corrective action is read-only or if it should go into the Actions workflow.
Required Corrective Actions
Required Corrective Actions are as they sound: admins can enable a checklist-level setting which, when toggled on, automatically makes corrective action entry prerequisite to submission of a checklist. Admins can then exclude the requirement, on a question-by-question basis, as needed. For questions requiring corrective action, team members will be prompted to add one whenever they provide a negative (no, fail, unacceptable) response. And with recent improvements to the corrective action entry process–including the abilities to pre-complete and/or tag a team member at the time of entry–the process is painless, and allows admins to gain critical insight.
Required Corrective Actions provide both added clarity to the checklist user and enhanced operational compliance for our clients. Often times, when a user is providing a negative response to a question (e.g. Is the raw meat the correct temperature?), they’re explicitly stating that a known quality, health and/or safety risk is present, and so follow-up action is not an option–it’s an operational imperative. And not only is it imperative to ensure follow-up action, the ability to analyze follow-up action is how our clients learn where they may have critical gaps in knowledge, training, and resources.
Read-only Actions
Read-only Actions are informational only and are not added to the Actions tab. They do not receive a Due Date or Status, and checklist users (e.g. auditors, secret shoppers, field team members) are not able to tag a user. When admins enable the Read-only Actions setting, they may also–depending on the target checklist user’s role within their organization (e.g. General Managers)–enable an additional setting to Allow Override. When enabled, the Allow Override setting would allow the checklist user to disable the read-only attribute at the time of entry, thereby allowing the individual Checklist Action or Corrective Action to follow the normal workflow.
Read-only Actions are critical to clients utilizing OnTrack for both audits and daily operations. When clients have field team members visiting locations, district manager inspections, safety officer inspections, or secret shoppers, all of those critical activities are often for observation rather than immediate intervention, and so it may not be appropriate for a Corrective Action or Checklist Action to go straight to the actions tab and tagged to a location-based onsite team member; rather these audit findings can be reported to the General Managers and their leadership, so they can then manage the action plan. But these are just some of the ways our clients structure their audits, and often General Managers conduct practice and self-reporting audits–this is a HUGE benefit and cost-saving measure that drives adoption of a digital checklist that provides time stamped photo evidence of compliance–and in these cases, we see a need for both read-only and intervening (non-read-only) actions. More than ever, it’s really going to be about the ‘Who’ when an admin is designing their audit checklist.
Disabled Corrective Actions
Disabled Corrective Actions are a question-level setting where an admin can choose to disable the Corrective Action prompt normally presented to checklist users whenever they provide a negative (no/fail/unacceptable) response.
Disabled Corrective Actions are there for the cases when a negative response is just fine. Sometimes you don’t need to prompt a checklist user. And when you can avoid prompting the user for corrective action unnecessarily you actually emphasize and strengthen appropriate prompts when they’re presented.
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