The Assessment is where you evaluate your client's entire IT stack, their IT strategy, and anything else you want to review consistently across your client base. Every Item gets a Grade, and those Grades roll up into the Health Score next to each client's name.
The Assessment comes pre-built from our template with a solid set of Items and Groups to get you started. Everything can be customized to match your process, but that's covered in Customizing Your Assessment. This article covers the basics of working with Assessments.
Watch: Understanding Assessments (5 min)
What the Assessment does
Each Assessment contains a list of Items: topics you're evaluating for the client. Items are organized into Groups (logical categories like Servers, Network, Security, Business Continuity, etc.). For each Item, you Grade how the client is doing, note the current Status, identify Risks, and recommend Solutions.
The Assessment connects to the rest of your Report in several ways:
Health Scores roll up from individual Item Grades to give an overall IT health picture
Roadmap and Budget pull Items with budgets and timelines into your financial projections
Related technology data links Flexible Items to Assessment Items, giving you real data to reference while grading
Arya AI uses Assessment context and related data to help automate filling out Assessments, saving time on repetitive grading work
Working with Assessment item fields
Each Assessment Item has several fields you fill out as part of your evaluation:
Grade: your rating for how the client is doing on this Item. Grades drive the Health Score.
Status: where things stand today. Keep this factual and specific: "Running Exchange 2016 on-premises, end of support October 2025" is more useful than "Needs attention."
Risk: what could go wrong if this isn't addressed. This is what helps clients understand urgency.
Solution: your recommendation. Be clear and actionable.
Budget: estimated cost if there's work to be done. Fill in the Month and Year columns alongside the Budget amount to control when the item appears in your Roadmap and Budget. There are also Recurring cost columns available for ongoing expenses like licenses or subscriptions; these need to be enabled in your template settings first.
You don't need to fill in every field for every Item right away. Start with Grades and a few key Items where you have strong recommendations, then build out more detail over time.
Item Description and Health Standard
Each Item also has two template-level fields that guide your team during grading:
Item Description: a plain language explanation of what this Item is evaluating and why it matters. It's defined in your template and appears when you open an Item.
Health Standard: what your MSP considers "healthy" for this Item. This is where you document your standards so your team grades consistently. It also plays a direct role in how Arya AI evaluates client data.
These fields are set at the template level, not filled out per client. See Customizing Your Assessment for how to write effective descriptions and health standards.
Grades
Grades are the ratings you assign to each Item. Strategy Overview provides a standard set out of the box, including Grades for healthy, warning, danger, and options for Items that are unanswered, not applicable, or hidden from client view.
Each Grade is configured to either count toward the Health Score as healthy or unhealthy, or be excluded from the score entirely. See Health Score Logic for how this works.
You can customize Grades beyond the defaults to track workflow states, client decisions, or project status. Many MSPs add Grades like "client declined" or "project in progress" to better reflect what's actually happening with each client. See Customizing Your Assessment for how to configure Grades.
Tags
Tags are labels you can attach to Assessment Items to organize and filter them. Strategy Overview's standard template includes Tags already built in:
1. Fundamentals: core Items valuable for most MSPs with any client
2. Operating: Items for more established vCIO processes
3. Scaling: Items for mature, advanced vCIO programs
Additional category Tags (Efficiency, Security, Prospect, Vertical) help you filter by topic area.
Start with Fundamentals for your first several TSMs. Expand to Operating and Scaling as your process matures. You can filter your Assessment view by Tag at any time using the Tag filter in the toolbar.
Tags also power tag-based Health Scores. If you tag all your security-related Items with a "Security" Tag, for example, you can surface a Security Health Score on the Dashboard and track how it changes from Report to Report over time. This is one of the more powerful uses of Tags: giving clients a focused view of how they're doing in a specific area, and showing progress as you address issues together.
Adding Items for a specific client
If a client has a unique need that doesn't apply to your other clients, you can add a Manual Group or Manual Item directly from within their Report in Build Mode. Use the + Manual Group and + Manual Item buttons in the Assessment toolbar.
Manual Groups and Items only exist on that client's Report. They are not added to your template and won't appear in other clients' Reports. If you want the same Item or Group across all clients, add it from your template settings instead. See Customizing Your Assessment for how to manage template-level Items and Groups.
Hiding Groups from client view
Not every Group is relevant to every client. Click the eye icon next to the Group name in Build Mode to hide the entire Group and all its Items from Display, Presentation, and Print modes. They remain visible in Build Mode so your team can still access them.
Important: If Items in a hidden Group have Budget values, those Items will still appear in Roadmap and Budget sections.
Going deeper
Customizing Your Assessment — add and edit Items, configure Grades, set health standards, relate technology data
Health Score Logic — how Health Scores are calculated from Grades and weights
Arya AI Assessment Assistant — using AI to speed up grading
Common questions
Can I have two Assessments on the same Report?
No. Each Report has one Assessment.
Can I relate more than one Flexible Item Group to an Assessment Item?
Each Assessment Item supports one related Flexible Item Group. If you have similar technology types you want to see together (like desktops and laptops), combine them into a single Flexible Item Group within your Integration Source (like "Workstations") so the related Item connection captures everything relevant.
What happens to Items I don't answer?
Unanswered Items are excluded from Health Score calculations by default (although this can be changed by configuring your Grades). They can be easily shown or hidden across Build, Display, and Presentation modes. Leaving Items unanswered is completely fine, especially when you're starting out.