Building and Managing Assessment Templates

Every assessment in MineOS starts from a template. A template defines the sections, questions, and field types that make up an assessment, so before you can run a Transfer Impact Assessment, a vendor security review, or an AI risk evaluation, you need a template that lays out what to ask. Templates keep assessments consistent across your organization and make it possible to compare responses across systems, vendors, or time.

[IMAGE PLACEHOLDER: Assessments landing page showing the assessments table and the "Templates" panel]

Templates by use case

Governance in MineOS covers three main use cases — Privacy, Vendor risk, and AI governance — and each comes with its own set of out-of-the-box templates built for that area. Within each use case, MineOS provides templates tailored to different regulations and regions, so you're not starting from a blank page even for region-specific requirements:

• Privacy — templates like Privacy Impact Assessment (PIA), Legitimate Interests Assessment (LIA), Transfer Impact Assessment (TIA), and Data Protection Impact Assessment (DPIA), including regional variants.
• Vendor risk — templates for vendor security and risk reviews, including frameworks like DORA-specific assessments for third-party criticality.
• AI governance — templates aligned to AI-specific regulation, such as the EU AI Act.

Because templates are grouped by use case, the gallery you see reflects the module you're working in — a Privacy user and a Vendor risk user will see different out-of-the-box options by default.

[IMAGE PLACEHOLDER: Out-of-the-box templates gallery, showing templates grouped under a use case]

Three ways to create a template

1. Use a template from the gallery — take an out-of-the-box template as-is, or as a base to customize, for your use case (Privacy, Vendor risk, or AI governance).
2. Start from scratch — build a new template with no starting structure.
3. Duplicate an existing template — copy any existing template and adjust it from there.

Whichever path you choose, you'll give the new template a name, optionally add labels for organization, and decide whether it should be vendor-specific. A vendor-specific template (toggled via "Ask for specific data source") ties the resulting assessment to a particular vendor or system.This is useful for templates like vendor security reviews, where every assessment created from the template should be tied to the vendor it's assessing.

[IMAGE PLACEHOLDER: "New template" modal showing name, labels, and the "Ask for specific data source" option]

Sections, questions, and field types

• Common field types — short answer, rich text, multiple choice, date, file upload, and text block.
• Special field types — built-in fields like business unit, data flow, data role, data types, and legal basis, which connect directly to structured data elsewhere in MineOS rather than collecting freeform text.
• Custom fields — your organization's own reusable fields (e.g. "AI Act Risk Tier" or "Countries"). These are shared and filterable across your assessments table, so once created, they're available in any template and stay consistent for reporting.

[IMAGE PLACEHOLDER: Template builder showing the "Add question" panel with common, special, and custom field options]

Required fields and descriptions

Each question can be toggled as Required, preventing an assessment from being marked complete until it's answered. Show description adds explanatory text beneath a question — useful context for collaborators, and also used by Mira AI when suggesting or autofilling answers, so a clear description improves AI-suggested responses too.

Conditional logic

Questions can be configured to appear only when certain conditions are met. Using Add logic, you set a rule like "show this question when [an earlier question] has exactly [a specific answer]," combinable with "any"/"all" matching across multiple rules. Any question that other questions depend on is flagged so you don't accidentally remove it.

[IMAGE PLACEHOLDER: Question logic panel showing conditional rules with "any"/"all" matching]

Editing, duplicating, and deleting templates

You can return to a template anytime to edit its sections and questions — this does not retroactively change assessments already created from it. From the template builder's menu, you can also duplicate a template as a starting point for a new one, or delete one you no longer need.

[IMAGE PLACEHOLDER: Template builder "..." menu showing Duplicate and Delete template options]

Tips and best practices

• Start from the gallery when you can — out-of-the-box templates are pre-built around specific regulations and regions, usually faster to adapt than starting from scratch.
• Use custom fields for data you’d like to view and filter in the table across different assessment types and templates.
• Write clear question descriptions — they shape Mira AI's suggestions, not just human collaborators' understanding.
• Use vendor-specific templates for anything tied to a single system.
• Remember edits aren't retroactive — update existing assessments separately if needed.

Linked articles

• Assessment quickstart
• Collaborating on assessments
• Using Mira autofill
• Reviewing, auditing, and exporting assessments