Private scenarios for evaluations
Some scenarios are not for the whole department. A scenario built to evaluate a firefighter for promotion has to be invisible to that firefighter, and stay invisible after the drill has run.
Marking a scenario admins only does that. It is a department-admin control: instructors cannot see the setting, and cannot see the scenarios it hides.
Why the drill matters as much as the scenario#
A review replays the scenario in full. That is the point of a review, and it is why hiding a scenario from the library is not enough on its own: the person you evaluated was in the drill, so they know its code, and without more the review would hand them the scenario.
So a drill inherits its scenario's setting. While a scenario is admins only:
- it is not in the scenario list for anyone else, and cannot be opened, copied, or edited by them
- it cannot be loaded into a drill by anyone else
- the drills you ran from it are not in After-Action Review for anyone else, and their reviews cannot be opened even by someone who knows the code
- those drills are not advertised in Happening now on the Sessions page
Running the evaluation#
Nothing changes about how you run it. Create the drill, load the scenario, and give the candidate the four-letter code the way you would for any drill. The code still works: it is what lets you invite exactly the person you mean to, and nobody else.
Other crew will not see the drill offered to them, so they cannot wander in.
Turning it on and off#
On the Scenario Builder tab, each row has a padlock. A closed amber padlock and an admins only tag mean the scenario is private; click it to share the scenario with the department, and click again to make it private.
Once you have at least one private scenario, a filter appears above the list: All, Shared, and Admins only. It is there so a chief with a season's worth of promotional scenarios can find them without reading every row.
Making a scenario shared again also releases every drill that ever ran it. That is usually what you want: the promotion cycle is over, and the drills become teaching material.
Releasing one review, keeping the scenario#
Sometimes the evaluation is finished but the scenario is not. You want the crew to learn from how the drill went, and you want to run the same scenario for the next candidate.
On the After-Action Review tab, a private drill shows an admins only tag and a Release button. Releasing lets the whole department watch that one review while the scenario itself stays private.
Releasing a review spends the scenario. The review replays the scenario in full, so anyone who watches it has effectively seen it. If you plan to put another candidate through the same scenario, leave the review locked. The app says this before it releases anything, because it is easy to assume otherwise.
Releasing can be undone: the drill goes back to admins only, and anyone who has not already watched it loses access again.
What is not hidden#
Training hours always count. A firefighter who ran a promotional evaluation earned that time and may need it for continuing education, so the drill stays in their training record with its date and duration. Only the scenario's name is withheld, because the name is what would tell the next candidate what they are walking into.
Evaluations are separate. A private scenario is about who can see the material. An evaluation is about who can see your assessment of a person, and it stays private to you until you release it. See Evaluations.
A limit worth knowing#
Admins only means every admin, not just you. If a department has two admins and one of them is the person being evaluated, they will see the scenario. Keep the admin role to the people who run promotions.