Leveraging AI Auto-Responses for Assessments

The AI Auto-Responses for Assessments Feature Set uses AI capabilities to automatically generate responses for questionnaires in assessments.

This feature set includes two different features that help fill out assessments faster: AI Document Scanner and AI Inventory Analysis. The AI Auto-Responses for Assessments Feature Set is tied to a singular global toggle and a singular template setting. The individual features - AI Document Scanner and AI Inventory Analysis - can be used together or separately.

Note:

For more details on OneTrust's AI features, see Managing AI Features in the OneTrust Platform.

Prerequisite: Check Availability of AI Auto-Responses for Assessments

AI Document Scanner is available to customers with an eligible subscription to one of the following OneTrust solutions:

  • Privacy Automation (Base and Suite)

  • Data and AI Governance

  • Tech Risk and Compliance

  • Third-Party Risk Management (Base and Suite)

AI Inventory Analysis is available to customers with an eligible subscription to one of the following OneTrust solutions:

  • Privacy Automation (Base and Suite)

  • Third-Party Risk Management (Base and Suite)

Customers with dedicated customer tenants should contact their account representative or OneTrust Support to request that the feature set be deployed.

Note:

The permission that enables the setting (AI Assessment Auto-Response Setting) and the permission that lets respondents use it (AI Assessment Auto-Responses) are two distinct permissions. Both may need to be granted to your custom roles.

To enable AI features in Global Settings

Important:

This process is only available to users with the Site Admin role. You will need to update the role permissions for any custom roles you have added, under the permission name AI Assessment Auto-Response Setting.

  1. Navigate to Global Settings by clicking the gear icon on the top-right corner of the screen. The Global Settings menu appears.

  2. In the Settings menu on the left-hand side, select AI management > AI features.


  3. Enable the Enable OneTrust AI setting, and then enable the Recommendations setting.
  4. Expand the View recommendation features option. Enable the Assessment auto-responses setting.


  5. Your selection will save automatically.

Enable Auto-responses on an assessment template

You will then need to enable Assessment auto-responses at the assessment template level.

Important:

You will need to have permission to change assessment templates to turn this feature on.

  1. On your product's menu, select Setup > Assessment templates.

  2. On the Template screen, hover over a template tile until the Edit Draft button appears.

  3. Click the Edit draft button.

  4. On the Template Builder, go to the Details tab.

  5. Scroll down to the Auto-responses section and enable the Auto-responses setting.



    In the Permitted references section, select the checkbox to scan the 3 most recent assessments of the primary record to inform AI suggestions.

    You can then select what kind of AI experience you want to provide respondents:

    • Suggest only: users review and then accept, dismiss, or edit AI-generated suggestions. Users can still manually enter responses in answer field.

    • Fill out automatically: AI-generated responses appear automatically in answer fields. Users can still review and edit text as usual, and they must confirm they’ve reviewed all responses before submitting the assessment.

  6. Click the Save button.

To accept or dismiss suggestions in launched assessments

Use AI Document Scanner to generate responses for questionnaires in assessments

Important:

The AI Document Scanner feature is available for customers with solution packaging only. It is available in Privacy Automation (Base and Suite), Data and AI Governance, Tech Risk and Compliance, and Third-Party Risk Management (Base and Suite).

  • This feature is available in all multi-tenant prod environments. Customers with dedicated customer tenants should contact your account representative or OneTrust Support to request the feature set be deployed.

    You will need to update the role permissions for any custom roles you have added for respondents to use this feature set, under the permission name AI Assessment Auto-Responses.

For more information, see AI Document Scanning FAQ.

Use AI Document Scanner to upload relevant documentation to an assessment. OneTrust will then parse information from your document to automatically answer relevant sections of the questionnaire. Documents such as marketing campaign pitches, product requirements, or executive summaries of new projects are all compatible with AI document scanning.

After the questionnaire responses have been parsed, you can review the answers using citation links that show you exactly which document answers were pulled from, so you canquickly validate the response. Using this feature can help save time and effort spent manually researching and answering assessment questionnaires.

Supported question types

AI Document Scanner can generate responses for the following question types:

  • Yes/no questions

  • Text box questions

  • Single-select and multi-select (MCQ) questions

  • Inventory attribute questions

  • Personal data attribute questions

To upload documentation to auto-answer assessments

  1. On your module menu, under Assessments, select Active.
  2. On the Assessment screen, select an assessment name. The assessment appears.

  3. Click View options in the Auto-responses banner.
    Note:

    The Auto-responses banner will only be visible if you have AI features enabled at the tenant level.



  4. On the Manage sources modal, click the Upload button to select a document to parse for responses.


    Important:

    You can upload the following file types: .bmp, .csv, .doc, .docx, .heif, .html, .jpeg, .jpg, .md, .pdf, .png, .ppt, .pptx, .tiff, .txt, .xls, .xlsx.

    You can upload a maximum of 50 files per assessment, with a limit of 64 MB per file. This limit is cumulative across the assessment, not per upload.

    Note:

    OneTrust recommends to narrow the scope of information as much as possible when choosing a document to upload. Specific and relevant the information is to the questionnaire, the more refined and accurate responses will be generated.

  5. Click the Scan button. A confirmation modal appears once the responses are generated.


    Note:

    You can click the Close button to exit the modal while the responses are generated. You will receive a notification in the Alert Center when the scan is complete.

  6. Select Answered with auto-responses in the drop-down menu under Assessment sections to review all AI-generated responses.


  7. Review the responses and edit them as needed. If you overwrite an AI-generated answer you can revert to the AI answer by clicking the View AI source button and clicking Revert back to AI answer in the References panel.


  8. Click the Submit button when the assessment is ready for submission. You must confirm you have reviewed all AI auto-responses before you can submit the assessment.


Use AI Inventory Analysis to auto-populate questions on an assessment

Important:

The AI Inventory Analysis feature is available for customers with solution packaging only. It is available in Privacy Automation (Base and Suite) and Third-Party Risk Management (Base and Suite).

  • This feature is available in the following environments: app-ca-prod, app-de-prod, uat-de, app-eu-prod, app-uk-prod, app-ae, app-jp, app-apac, free-app, app-hc, uat-hc, app-in, app-au, app-ch, and app-br.

  • Customers with dedicated customer tenants should contact your account representative or OneTrust Support to request the feature set be deployed.

Using AI Inventory Analysis, any time a new assessment is created, questions on the assessment will be pre-populated with AI-generated responses.

These responses are based on related data from directly-related assessments and directly-related inventories.

AI Inventory Analysis currently supports the following Primary Inventory Record types:

  • Vendors

  • Assets

  • Processing Activities

  • Entities

  • AI Systems

  • AI Agents

  • Datasets

  • Models

  • Projects

In the case of reassessing (meaning, using the officially supported Reassess workflow), AI Inventory Analysis references the most recent historical assessment you're reassessing, in addition to the two most recent historical assessments, where applicable.

This enhancement is designed to cut down the amount time each respondent spends on filling out each assessment.

This feature streamlines DPIA completion by reducing the amount of time a respondent spends transferring previously entered information from a PIA.

AI Inventory Analysis begins upon assessment launch. To initiate AI Inventory Analysis, launch an assessment. For more information, see Launching Assessments.

AI Auto-Responses Feature Set shared capabilities

To review sources for AI-generated responses

  1. On your module menu, under Assessments, select Active.

  2. On the Assessments screen, select an assessment name. The assessment appears.

  3. Click the View AI Source button for the response you want to review.



  4. Review the source information.

To filter the assessment for AI-completed questions

If Suggest only or Fill out automatically is enabled, you can filter your assessment for questions already answered with AI by selecting Answered with auto-responses from the Questions selection menu.





To view the reference panel and revert back to an AI answer

To access the reference panel, the respondent can select the References link in the Suggested Response box or click the View AI Source button if they have already declined or accepted the answer.

If the respondent has dismissed or changed an AI-suggested answer they can select the Revert back to AI answer button to overwrite those changes.



To provide feedback on AI suggestions

If the respondent wants to give feedback, the respondent can select either a thumbs up or thumbs down icon to leave positive or negative feedback, respectively. Pre-filled options for additional feedback display.



Important:

This feedback is not being fed back into the AI model, but is instead delivered to the OneTrust Product organization so the team can better understand and track the accuracy of the feature.