---
title: Responding to assessments
description: Use the Smart Assessment Engine application to help assessors complete assessment requests. Track your progress and let the system automatically save your information. Administrators and template managers manage the assessment process.
locale: en-US
canonical_url: https://www.servicenow.com/docs/r/australia/governance-risk-compliance/smart-assessment-engine/sae-respond-to-asmnt.html
release: australia
product: Smart Assessment Engine
classification: smart-assessment-engine
topic_type: concept
last_updated: "2026-03-12"
reading_time_minutes: 3
breadcrumb: [Manage, Smart Assessment Engine, Governance, Risk, and Compliance]
---

# Responding to assessments

Use the Smart Assessment Engine application to help assessors complete assessment requests. Track your progress and let the system automatically save your information. Administrators and template managers manage the assessment process.

## Assessment response overview

If you have the Assessment actor \[sn\_smart\_asmt.actor\] role, you can submit responses to an assigned assessment. Here are some more key functionalities:

-   A progress indicator displays how much of the assessment you have completed.
-   Questions are paginated, making it easier to navigate through the assessment.
-   Your work is automatically saved, eliminating the risk of potential data loss.
-   An assessment administrator \[sn\_smart\_asmt.assessment\_admin\] can cancel assessments that are no longer needed.

If you have the assessment reassign \[sn\_smart\_asmt.reassign\] role, you can reassign in-progress assessments to another user. If your template manager or administrator has added reference information, such as scope-related information, you can view it in the Details section of your assessment. If relevant to the state of the assessment, the scope, requester, assignee, the requested and due dates are listed in the Details section by default.

While responding to an assessment, you can collaborate at the level of individual questions through four features on each question card: **Comments** for question-specific conversation, **Work notes** for private threads available only to users with a configured role, question **Flags** for marking questions that need attention, and question-level **Change history** for tracking how the response, justification, and flag state changed. For an overview of these features, including how their visibility and permissions are controlled, see [Collaboration in assessments](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ServiceNow/ServiceNowDocs/australia/markdown/australia/governance-risk-compliance/smart-assessment-engine/collaboration-in-assessments.md). For details on the change history panel, see [Question change history](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ServiceNow/ServiceNowDocs/australia/markdown/australia/governance-risk-compliance/smart-assessment-engine/sae-question-change-history.md).

The following example shows how your progress, save status, assessment status, reference information, actions, and more are indicated in the assessment view.

\[Omitted image "sae-asmnt-respond.png"\] Alt text: In-progress assessment that shows the previously described features and their indicators.

## Assessment response features

-   **Navigating assessments**

    Assessment actors can navigate through an assessment by selecting the section of questions they’re ready to answer.

-   **Saving assessments**

    Your assessment progress is automatically saved and your save status is indicated by the saved badge \[Omitted image "save-indicator.png"\] Alt text: Saved badge..

-   **Progress tracking in assessments**

    The progress bar indicates how many questions remain in the assessment including required and optional questions.

-   **Filtering questions**

    Responders can narrow the question list by selecting one or more filters from the filter drop-down list. Multiple filters can be combined to focus on questions that match every selected criterion. For details on each available filter and how to combine them, see [Filtering questions in an assessment](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ServiceNow/ServiceNowDocs/australia/markdown/australia/governance-risk-compliance/smart-assessment-engine/filtering-questions-in-an-assessment.md).

-   **Default focus when opening or reopening an assessment**

    When you open or reopen an assessment, the view defaults to the assessment instructions if configured. Otherwise, the view defaults to the first question of the first section or subsection. This default focus applies even if you or a contributor already answered later questions, or a response was set by response automation.

    **Note:** This feature is available starting with Australia Patch 2.

-   **Searching reference-type question responses**

    For single-select and multi-select reference-type questions, if the specified table returns more than 10 records, you see only the first 10 by default. Select the search icon to open a list of all matching records and choose from the full set.

    **Note:** This feature is available starting with Australia Patch 2.