Acceptance Criteria: Acceptance Criteria Tab

Use this tab to set the minimum acceptance score and to specify the metrics that are used to calculate the acceptance criteria score.

Acceptance Criteria Common Fields

For a description of the fields and menus above the tabs, see Acceptance Criteria Common Fields.

Field Description
Minimum Acceptance Score

Select the score that the schedule must attain in order to be accepted. You can select a number between 0 and 100.

Touchstone compares an uploaded schedule to the acceptance criteria metrics and scores the schedule based on the metric influence selector values. If the score is equal to or greater than the score listed here, the schedule passes and Touchstone displays Accepted in the Submittals view Status column. If the score is less than the score listed here, Touchstone displays Rejected in the Submittals Status column and the submitter can view a report of the issues that caused the schedule to fail.

Note: No matter whether or not the schedule passes or fails, the submitter and reviewer can view a report of the issue found by the metric in the submitted schedule.
Remarks Click on this field to add any additional information or description about the score or the appropriate use of this acceptance criteria. Clicking on the field displays the Remarks dialog box.
Scoring Method
Select the method you want Touchstone to use to evaluate metrics used for calculating the score.
  • Average of Metrics: With metric-base scoring, Touchstone calculates the score using an average of the metric scores. Metric-based scoring allows incremental improvements to tasks to be reflected in the overall score. The metric-based method typically produces higher scores, as a single task needs to fail in multiple areas simultaneously in order to receive a very low score.

    The calculation is as follows: Overall Score = (Summation of all of the tripwire formula results for each of the activities across all of the metrics) / (the number of tripwire results for the project).

  • Record Fails if One Metric Fails: This method calculates the score on a per-record basis and the final score is an average of the per-record scores. This places a premium on absolute compliance with the assigned metrics. The breach of any single metric on a task prevents those tasks from receiving a "passing grade." This is the default setting.

    The calculation is as follows: Overall Score = (Summation of all of the tripwire formula results that are equal to 100 for each of the activities across all of the metrics) / (the number of tripwire results for the project).

The "number of tripwire results" in the above calculations takes into account ONLY the number of metrics that have their "Tripwire Formula" tab enabled on the Metrics tab in Deltek Acumen.

Metrics Used to Calculate Score

Use this grid to add metrics and to set the influence value. Touchstone uses them to evaluate the schedules and determine the acceptance criteria score for each schedule. You can select metrics from the list of imported metrics, and to set the influence value.

The grid header includes the following icons:
  • : Click Maximize / Minimize to hide the Navigation pane so that more of the grid is visible. When you click the icon again, the grid returns to the original size and the Navigation pane displays again.
  • : ClickExport to download all data in the grid to a .csv file.
Field Description
Folder This is the folder where the metric is located.
Metric This is the metric name. Click on the name to view:
  • Metric name.
  • Remarks if any are available.
  • Activity Status or Activity Type inclusions. An inclusion is a filter (typically a check box) that allows the person creating the metric to select or deselect activities by Status (Planned, In-Progress, Complete) and by Type (Summary, Milestone, Normal, Level of Effort).
  • A filter if one has been defined.
  • The metric primary formula. If the primary formula is not defined, no formula displays.

You can delete metrics by hovering over a line (or clicking on a line) and clicking the X that displays on the right side of the line.

Influence Selector / Influence Value

Use the influence Selector to indicate how one metric counts towards the overall score for a group of metrics. You can choose values on a +/- 10-point sliding scale. The higher the value, the more impact the metric in question has on the score. By default, metric selectors are set to the midpoint on the scale which has no impact on the score. This allows you to include metrics for reporting purposes.

Move the Influence Selector slider or enter a value in the Influence Value field to adjust the value of each metric. When you adjust the Influence Selector, the Influence Value changes accordingly and vice versa.

For each condition that the schedule meets, it accumulates a point value, whether the point value is negative or positive. The score is then normalized on a scale of 0 to 100 and compared to the Minimum Acceptance Score.

Automatically Reject Select this checkbox when you want to specify that the submittal must be rejected, regardless of score, if it fails any of the metrics that have this checkbox selected. The metric failure is defined in the metric tripwire thresholds when the metrics are created in Acumen.

When the submitter receives the rejection email, it includes information about the rejected metric: "The schedule failed metric <metric name>, which is set for automatic rejection."

+ Add Metric

Click to add a metric to the grid. The grid is hierarchical and shows the folders in which the metrics are stored. Place a check next to each metric that you want to add. Click a folder to select or deselect all metrics within that folder.

X (Delete)

When you hover over a line in the Metrics Used to Calculate Score grid, an X displays on the right side of the line. Click the X to remove the metric from the acceptance criteria template.