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Duration Field on Pre-Assessments: Track How Long Assessments Take (CRM)

Learn how the new Duration field automatically captures the elapsed time of Pre-Assessments in seconds. This guide covers how the iScreen AI Agent populates the field, where to find it on the record, and how to utilize it in reports.

1. Before You Start

You will need:

  • A CRM instance running this release.

  • For initial setup: Command-line access to the CRM webroot on each tenant (DevOps task runs once per instance).

  • The iScreen Agent enabled and connected to your CRM (via the existing AI Agent Settings → iScreen Agent tab).

  • For users: Standard CRM access to view / edit Pre-Assessments.

Access requirements: The Duration field uses your normal Pre-Assessments view/edit permissions. Anyone who can already see a PAA can see Duration.

2. Provisioning the Field on Each Instance

(Note: For DevOps only. Skip ahead to Section 3 if you are a CRM end-user).

After the release is deployed, run the provisioning script once on every tenant database. The script is idempotent—it is safe to run multiple times.

What the script does, in order:

  1. Checks whether a Pre-Assessments field labelled Duration already exists. If it does, the script reuses it.

  2. If the field is missing, it picks the Pre-Assessments storage table that has room for a new 4-byte integer column. Pre-Assessments uses an overflow-aware storage manager, so the script never silently fails on a full table.

  3. Creates the field in the Basic Information block of the Pre-Assessments layout, setting the data type to Integer (unit by convention: seconds).

  4. Verifies the field exists, then adds the iScreen mapping that connects the agent's elapsedTime payload to this field.

💡 Tip: If you see an error about "all custom-field tables are full," run Optimize Storage on the Pre-Assessments module first, then re-run the script.

3. Where the Duration Field Appears

The Duration field shows up everywhere a regular Pre-Assessments custom field shows up:

Location

What you see

Pre-Assessment Detail view

Duration row in the Basic Information block, displayed as an integer number of seconds.

Pre-Assessment Edit form

Editable integer field. You can type a value directly if you need to override the automatic one. Only whole numbers are accepted; decimals are rounded.

Pre-Assessments list view

Add Duration to the visible columns via the column-chooser dropdown above the list.

Module Layout Editor

Available in the field tray. Drag to reorder the field within the block, change its label, or hide it.

Reports

Selectable in the Pre-Assessments report builder under the same block.

CSV / Excel export

Included automatically in any export that selects the field's block.

💡 Tip: The default position is the bottom of the Basic Information block. If you want it higher, open Settings → Module Manager → Pre-Assessments → Layout Editor and drag it to the desired position.

4. How Duration Gets Populated

Automatic (iScreen): When the iScreen AI Agent finishes a Pre-Assessment, the agent sends the elapsed time as part of the same webhook that creates the PAA record. This happens with no user action required.

The CRM will then:

  1. Receive the webhook payload (which includes the elapsedTime field).

  2. Coerce the value to a whole integer. String and decimal forms are tolerated and converted (decimals are truncated, not rounded).

  3. Save the value into the new Duration field as the PAA is created.

Manual Updates:

Anyone with edit access to a PAA can type or change the Duration value directly from the Edit form. This is useful for back-filling older PAAs or correcting an obvious outlier. Type the value in seconds.

Pre-existing PAAs: Records created before this release have no Duration, so the cell is empty. They are not back-filled automatically. You can leave them blank (reports will treat them as "no data"), or manually enter a value in seconds.

5. Reports & Exports

Because Duration is a standard integer field (in seconds), you can:

  • Group or filter by duration ranges (For example, "PAAs that took longer than 600 seconds").

  • Calculate average, sum, min, and max in report summary rows.

  • Derive minutes from seconds in your report or spreadsheet by dividing by 60, or hours by dividing by 3600.

⚠️ Important: 0 seconds is a valid value, not the same as "no data". The CRM distinguishes between an iScreen agent that genuinely reported zero elapsed time and an iScreen agent that did not send any value. A blank cell means "no data was reported"; a 0 means "iScreen sent zero".

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