Questionnaire Structure
Three settings decide how a questionnaire is built and what it counts: whether an element takes part in the score, whether a chapter can appear more than once in a report, and whether a question carries sub-questions.
What counts towards the score
The Part of Scoring setting exists at three levels, and the level decides how far the exclusion reaches:
Everything is included by default; the setting is only needed to exclude something. Questions answered with text, a date or a number are never scored anyway — only answer-set gradings contribute.
The rule of thumb: use the answer set level for sets that are purely informational, such as a yes/no used for documentation. Use the topic level when the same question should count in one questionnaire but not in another.
Chapters that repeat
A Repeatable Section is a chapter defined once in the template and used many times in a report, each instance with its own answers, pictures and observations.
The point is that a template stays small while a report scales to what a vessel actually has. A tank inspection is defined once; a vessel with eight cargo tanks and two slop tanks gets ten instances under it, each collecting its own answers on the same question structure. The same applies to holds, cranes, lifeboats or any other repeating inventory.
A chapter is made repeatable in Item Config by ticking Repeatable Section on the group. From then on it is repeatable in every questionnaire using that group. Each instance is scored on its own, and the chapter total is the combination of them.
Adding an instance
In the report tree, chapters all look alike — a repeatable template carries no special icon or colour. The reliable way to tell is to select the chapter and see whether Add Section becomes available; it is only enabled on a repeatable template or on one of its existing instances.
- Select the repeatable template, or an instance already created under it.
- Click
Add Section. - Enter the Name of the new section, for example No. 3 Cargo Tank Port.
- If the template asks for one, pick a Tank Type.
- Confirm.
Where the new section lands depends on what was selected: standing on the template creates it inside the template, standing on an existing instance creates it next to that instance. Instances therefore always stay flat under their template — a section is never created inside another section.
Tank Type appears when the template has Require Tank Type set. It is then mandatory, and the section is named accordingly, for example Fuel Oil Tank - ULSHFO Bunker Tk SB. Templates that have nothing to do with tanks — drills, crane inspections — only ask for the name. The type is stored with the section and appears in the report, which is what makes sections comparable across a fleet.
Note that changing a template later is not retroactive: sections created before a template started requiring a tank type do not get one afterwards. They have to be created again if the type is needed for reporting.
The name is free text and not checked for duplicates. A consistent scheme — No. 1 Cargo Tank Port, No. 1 Cargo Tank Starboard — keeps printed reports readable.
Removing an instance
Select the section and click Delete Section, then confirm.
This removes the section, all its questions and all its observations, including pictures and linked follow-up tasks belonging to it. There is no undo: a section deleted by mistake has to be added again and its answers re-entered.
Only a repeated section can be deleted. The repeatable template itself, top-level chapters and ordinary non-repeatable chapters are protected — on those the button stays greyed out.
Questions with sub-questions
An item can carry sub-items, for cases where a main question has related detail questions.
They are created in Item Config: select the parent item, choose New, and confirm the question asking whether a sub-item should be created. The sub-item then gets its own question text, answer type and scoring setting.
In the editor and in the report, sub-items appear indented under their parent. Each is graded separately — a parent's score is independent of its sub-items. A typical use looks like this: