Exam Builder

An exam draws on the question bank and decides everything about how the assessment behaves: which questions appear, in what order, how long the examinee has, who may sit it, and when the result is released.

The builder is organised into tabs. This page walks through what each one controls.

The exam builder pool rules panel, showing two rules — one drawing eight questions from a subject and one drawing four from a tag — each with a draw count and points-per-question field, alongside the fixed-questions list and a running total

Fixed questions and pools

An exam gets its questions two ways, and can use both at once.

Fixed questions are pinned. Every examinee receives exactly these, in the order you set (subject to shuffling). Use them when the paper must be identical for everyone.

Pool rules draw questions at random. A rule names a source — a subject or a tag — and a number to draw. Each examinee gets a different selection.

	Fixed questions	Pool rules
Source	Individually chosen	A subject or a tag
Same for everyone	Yes	No — drawn per attempt
Points	Set per question	Set per rule, or inherited from each question's own default
Ordering	Explicit, drag to reorder	Drawn, then placed

Note: the question count in the exam list counts fixed questions only, so a pure-pool exam legitimately shows zero there. The exam detail view reports the real total — fixed questions plus each pool's draw count — and flags the total points as approximate when a pool inherits per-question points rather than setting its own.

The draw happens once. When an examinee starts, the pool is resolved and the resulting paper is frozen into the attempt along with the taking mode. Editing the exam or the bank afterwards never changes a paper already in progress.

Sections

Questions can be grouped into named sections. A section carries its own ordering, and lets you build a paper with a recognisable structure — a comprehension section, a calculation section — rather than one flat list.

Sections are presentational and organisational; grading is still per question.

Shuffling

Two independent switches:

Setting	Effect
Shuffle questions	Randomises the order questions are presented in
Shuffle options	Randomises the order of the options within a choice question

Both are resolved when the attempt starts and frozen with the paper, so an examinee who reloads sees the same order they had before — shuffling is not re-rolled on every page load.

Timing and attempts

Field	What it does	Notes
Time limit	Minutes allowed for the attempt	Enforced on the server. Reaching zero auto-submits.
Maximum attempts	How many times one person may sit the exam	Practice attempts are excluded.
Cooldown	Minutes that must pass between attempts	Checked at start, next to the attempt cap.
Open from / Open until	The window during which the exam can be started	Absolute times. See When the exam window shuts, below.

Taking mode

Four behaviours, set per exam, each with a global default that seeds new exams.

Setting	Options	What changes
Attempt mode	Exam or practice	Practice ignores the time limit, the attempt cap and the cooldown, and never auto-locks.
Practice reveal	On submit, or per question	Per-question reveal grades and locks one answer at a time and shows feedback immediately.
Layout	Single page, or one per page	One-per-page pages through the questions client-side over a server-rendered form.
Pause and resume	Allowed or not, with caps	Freezes the clock. Both the number of pauses and total paused minutes can be capped; zero means unlimited.

The chosen mode is frozen into the attempt at start, so changing the exam does not alter how a running attempt behaves.

Exam runner

Three more settings on the same tab decide how the runner presents itself, and are frozen into the attempt the same way.

Setting	Options	What changes
Review answers before submitting	On or off	Adds a final step listing every question as answered, not answered or flagged, so nothing is handed in blank by accident. On by default.
Allow finishing early	On or off	Puts a Finish action in the runner header, reachable from any question. With it off, finishing is only offered on the last question. On by default.
Fullscreen	Off · Offered · Expected	Offered adds a fullscreen button. Expected also asks at the start and again if the examinee leaves. Off by default.

Fullscreen is best-effort and never blocks an attempt: Safari on iPhone and iPad cannot grant it, and neither can many LMS embeds, so those examinees continue in a distraction-free view. Leaving fullscreen is recorded as an integrity signal and nothing more. See Exam Runner.

Auto-close abandoned attempts

An examinee who closes the browser mid-exam never tells the server anything. Without a rule to close it, that attempt stays in progress indefinitely: it keeps holding one of the learner's allowed attempts, and the answers they had already saved are never marked. These settings decide what happens instead. Each is per exam, with a global default under Settings → Taking that seeds new exams.

Three situations close an attempt:

The time limit runs out. Applies to timed exams only.
Nothing is heard for the inactivity period. This is the only rule that reaches an untimed exam or a paused attempt — neither has a deadline that can pass, so without an inactivity period they would stay open forever.
The exam window shuts, if the exam is set to stop everyone at that moment.

Setting	Options	What it does
When an attempt is closed automatically	Hand it in and mark it · Void it	Marking uses whatever was already saved. Voiding records no result and gives the learner their attempt back.
Close after inactivity	Minutes, 0 to disable	Measured from the last contact with the examinee's browser.
When the exam window shuts	Stop every attempt · Let each run its own clock out	Stopping is the usual choice for an invigilated sitting. Running out is kinder to someone who started late.
Tell the examinee	Say it was closed automatically · Send the usual submission email · Send nothing	The first option uses a dedicated email template that explains why it closed.
Time spent on a closed attempt	Cap at the deadline · True wall clock	Capping keeps duration statistics honest: a one-hour exam closed a week later still reads as one hour.
Also close attempts an invigilator paused	Yes / No	Off by default. A room frozen deliberately — for a fire alarm, say — should not submit itself while everyone is outside.

Notes worth knowing:

Attempts started near the closing time do not outlive it. When the exam is set to stop everyone at the window, the deadline is capped at the closing time when the attempt starts, so the countdown the examinee sees is truthful. Pausing and resuming cannot be used to push past it.
Grading is never skipped. Marking a closed attempt runs the normal grading path, including partial credit, so a result closed automatically is indistinguishable from one handed in by hand.
Webhooks and LMS grade passback always fire, whichever notification option you choose — an external gradebook stays correct regardless of what the learner is told.
Closures are recorded in the live monitoring activity log, attributed to Automatic.

Access and release

The Access & Release tab decides who may sit the exam and what they see afterwards.

Field	What it does
Access type	View level, open registration, access code, identified guest, or restricted to an allow-list. Covered in full under Access gates.
Access code	The shared code, when the access type requires one.
Result release	Immediate, after the exam closes, at a scheduled time, or manual.
Release at	The absolute time, for scheduled release.
Show answers	Whether the correct answers are revealed alongside the score. A separate decision from releasing the score itself.
Pass message / Fail message	Rich text shown on the result page under the pass or fail banner. Inherits the release gating, so it is not shown before results are released.
Certificate template	Which certificate to issue on a pass. None by default.
Lock policy	Whether the attempt's review locks after being seen.
Pass mark	The percentage needed to pass, and the threshold certificates are issued against.

Integrity and monitoring

Two per-exam switches connect the exam to the observation features:

Track integrity enables focus-loss, paste, tab-switch and fullscreen-exit capture for this exam. It is frozen into the attempt at start, and also requires the global capture switch. See Integrity signals.
Live monitoring needs no per-exam switch — any in-progress attempt appears on the board. See Live monitoring.

Custom fields

If custom fields are defined for the exam context, they appear in the builder alongside the native fields. Searchable fields are stored so they can be filtered on; the rest are stored with the exam. See Question Bank for how the two storage modes differ.

Access control

Action	Required permission
View exams	`exams` — view
Create an exam	`exams` — create
Edit an exam	`exams` — edit
Delete an exam	`exams` — delete
Publish or unpublish	`exams` — publish
Build a restricted access rule	Also needs `cohorts` — view, to choose a cohort

The exam detail view additionally shows a performance card drawn from analytics; it is only populated for users who also hold reports view permission, and is simply omitted otherwise rather than erroring.