POA&M How-To-Admin

Owned by Christopher Rushing (Unlicensed)
Last updated: Aug 16, 2022 by Michael Peters
3 min read

Before the IT Audit Machine can start generating POA&M reports, an Administrator must configure the form to generate the appropriate reports from a template.

The steps to accomplish that are as follows:

First, in the Form Manager, find and expand the Plan of Action and Milestones (POA&M) form and click the Edit icon.

This will bring up the Form Builder tool.

For more information about editing forms, see the Form Builder section of the Administration Guide

On the right-hand side of the Form Builder, select the Form Properties tab in the tool box. At the bottom of the Form Properties, select the show more options link at the bottom.

Scroll down through the additional options presented until you find the Template Options. Make sure only the Enable Uploading Templates option is selected. Upload the POA&M template you will use to generate the POA&Ms from the system by clicking Upload Files and selecting the template file from your system.

ALERT!

  1. When naming spreadsheet tabs, use only single words, not multi-word descriptions.

  2. When naming the spreadsheet file, be sure to eliminate any spaces and special characters in the name.

Not following these basic rules will create issues with the form’s POA&M logic rules.

A default template can be requested from Continuum GRC.

Once the template is uploaded, click the Save or Sync and Save button to save the changes.

Next, in the Form Manager, expand the Plan of Action and Milestones (POA&M) form again and click the Logic icon.

This will bring up the Form Logic interface for the POA&M form. Find the option for Enable Rules to generate POAM reports and check the box next to the text. This will bring up the ability to select where the POA&Ms will go. Set entries where the POA&M Current Status field is Open to go into the OPEN tab, and the entries where it is Closed to go into the CLOSED tab.

Once the logic for both the OPEN and the CLOSED tabs is set, it should look similar to this. If it does not, please refer to the ALERT! note above.

The template name should reflect the name of the template which was uploaded earlier.

Once both sets of logic have been defined, click the Save Settings button to save the changes.

ITAM is now ready to generate POA&M forms for your organization.

Enjoy the power of Continuum GRC.