Crisis Sim Managers can build bespoke scenarios from scratch, from a template, via the AI Generator, or by importing an Excel file — this article covers the design principles, the Scenario Builder interface, managing drafts, and publishing.
Before you start
Platform role required: Crisis Sim Manager
A little planning before you open the builder saves a lot of rework later. Work through the questions below before you start creating.
Which crisis scenario will the exercise be based on?
- Are there high-risk areas or particular threats your organization is currently facing?
- What will resonate with your target audience, and what's plausible?
- Threat examples: disruption to critical infrastructure or supply chain; a ransomware attack; theft of intellectual property; malicious leaking of customer data.
What are the learning objectives?
- Do you want to test familiarity with company regulations or specific cyber capabilities?
- Are there key teams you want to target — for example, your crisis management team?
- Do you want to measure confidence against responses?
What resources will you need?
Gather organizational policies such as incident response plans — these can be embedded directly into the scenario to make it specific to your organization.
What are the key events, and in what order do they occur?
The timeline of key events becomes the scenario's foundation.
Inject design
Each decision point in a scenario is called an inject. We recommend including between 8 and 12, which gives participants around an hour of content. Injects should be succinct but include enough context for participants to make a meaningful choice. Each inject can include supporting attachments — images, videos, audio, and URLs — that bring the scenario to life.
Examples of media to attach:
- A video from an executive member of staff
- An email from a staff member affected by the crisis
- A customer complaint email
- A news article about the crisis
We suggest three to five options per inject. Rank each option as weak, okay, good, or great. At least one path through the scenario must have a great option at every inject. When writing options, start with the best choice, then the least preferred, then fill in the middle.
In some cases the crisis means there's no truly great answer — every option involves compromise. Even so, the least-worst option should still be ranked great, because it's the strongest available choice.
Option feedback
Feedback is what participants see after selecting an option. It should explain why each option was ranked the way it was — helping learners understand the quality of their response and make better choices in the future. Both rankings and feedback should be mapped back to your organization's best practice or an industry framework (for example, "Option A is weak because ISO 27001 says this approach should never be taken").
Good feedback includes:
- A recap of the decision they were asked to make
- The rationale for the weakest option
- The rationale for the middle option(s)
- The rationale for the strongest option
Paths and branches
Choosing a particular option can take participants down different pathways. For example, paying a ransom has very different consequences from not paying it, so each choice might lead to a different branch of the scenario. The Tree View in the Scenario Builder gives you a visual map of all your scenario's pathways.
Performance indicators
Performance indicators show the immediate impact of a participant's decision on one or more key business metrics. They're dynamic graphs that change throughout the exercise based on choices made, giving a visual representation of real-world implications.
Performance indicators are completely optional — don't use them if they don't add value to your scenario. Examples include company reputation, return to operations, and share price. Each indicator needs a starting value that increases or decreases based on the options participants select: a great or good decision typically improves the score, a weak decision reduces it, and an okay decision may have no effect.
Choosing your creation method
To get started, navigate to Exercise in the main navigation menu, select Immersive Crisis Simulations, and then select Create Scenario.
You'll then be offered four ways to create a scenario:
- Build new scenario — start from a blank canvas and build everything yourself in the Scenario Builder (described in the next section).
- Create from template — copy an existing scenario from the catalog, including all its events, injects, and media, then amend as needed. Browse the catalog first to understand the scope of work a bespoke scenario involves.
- Create with AI — use the AI Generator to produce a draft scenario quickly. See Article 7: AI Scenario Generator for full details.
- Import your scenario — upload an edited Excel file to create a new scenario. See Article 8: Creating a New Custom Scenario via Excel Download/Import for full details.
Building in the Scenario Builder
Scenario Overview screen
The Scenario Overview is the first screen you see after naming a new scenario. It acts as a central hub, giving you a summary of key details and letting you input and amend core information.
On the Scenario Overview you'll find:
- Scenario image — an optional image to represent the scenario in the catalog. Images must have a 16:9 aspect ratio, be no larger than 5 MB, and have a minimum resolution of 1200 × 675 px. Use a third-party tool to resize or crop before uploading — the platform no longer supports in-app resizing.
- Scenario structure visualization — a small map of your scenario's flow that updates in real time as you build in Tree View.
- Scenario context — industry, threat actor, and attack vector.
- Briefing information — a summary that updates automatically when you change the briefing in Tree View.
- Translation languages — where you select which languages to translate into before publishing.
You can return to the Scenario Overview at any time using the back arrow in the top navigation bar.
Fill in the Overview fields — Scenario Title, Authoring Language, Industry sector, Attack vector, Threat actor, and Briefing. Select "Other" if none of the predefined options apply. The Briefing should set the scene and describe the crisis. We recommend drafting it in a text editor first to catch typos before pasting it in.
Next, define the roles. Decide who the participant is impersonating in the scenario, select a role category, give the role a title (usually a job title), and add context about their responsibilities. Scenarios can have a single role or multiple roles. If you create multiple roles, assign them to individual injects at the inject creation stage.
Tree View — the primary building method
Tree View is the primary way to build your scenario. You start with an Overview node (home of the briefing, roles, and key takeaways) and add injects and interludes from the builder toolbar.
- To create a new child option branching from an inject, click the blue plus button below the inject.
- To link an option to the next part of the scenario, click the transparent plus button underneath the option, then choose to create an interlude or an inject.
- To break a connection between an option and the next element, highlight the connecting line and select the red cross button.
- To reconnect an option to a different element, hover over the small grey circle at the bottom of the option, then drag to the desired element.
To view or edit an inject or interlude, click it in Tree View. A pane opens on the right with two tabs: Details (title, description, role, media attachments, preview, duplicate, delete) and Options (list of options branching from the inject, which you can reorder by dragging). Clicking an option node shows its title, description, and which inject or interlude it links to. All changes save automatically.
Give each inject:
- A title
- A date and time — these should be realistic and laid out in a logical sequence
- A description — keep it to one or two sentences
- A role assignment
- Media attachments where relevant (MP3, WAV, PNG, JPG, MP4, M4A, and PDF; maximum 100 MB per file)
For each option, provide:
- A title and description
- Feedback
- A ranking (weak, okay, good, or great)
- Performance indicator impacts
- Option logic — which inject or interlude the participant goes to after selecting this option. You can create a new inject here or select an existing one. This is how you build your scenario's branches.
You can preview any inject in isolation as you build — click Preview Inject without needing to run through the full scenario.
To test the full flow, select Preview in the top right at any point. You can navigate backwards and forwards through the scenario, then return to build mode to continue editing.
List View
List View is an alternate view you can switch to from the builder toolbar. It lists injects in the order participants will experience them during playback, with child options indented underneath. It's useful for a quick linear check of your scenario's structure.
Global Settings
Global Settings lives in the top navigation bar. Here you toggle scenario-wide features on or off:
- Option ranking
- Response confidence capture
- Response justification capture
- Feedback (and when it's shown — after each option, or with results at the end)
- Performance indicators
Once a setting is toggled on, the corresponding fields appear at the inject and option level.
We recommend enabling option ranking and confidence capture. Ranking lets participants understand the strength of their answer; confidence adds a further layer of granularity. Both feed into After Action Reports. Justification asks participants to explain their choice in free text.
Incomplete Fields indicator
You can show a count of incomplete fields in the navigation bar. This highlights every place in your scenario where missing required information is preventing publication. Required fields include the briefing, scenario context dropdowns, at least one role, title and description for all injects, interludes, and options, and any text or number fields for toggled global settings.
Translations
You can translate your scenario into English, German, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, and Japanese. When a user changes their language preference, they see the translated version. To translate, select 3. Translate from the top navigation menu, select Yes for auto-translation, and click Translate.
Managing drafts
If you don't publish a scenario when you create it, it enters a draft state and won't appear in the scenario catalog or be available when scheduling an exercise.
To find your drafts, navigate to Exercise > Immersive Crisis Simulations > Create Scenario. The lower half of the page lists all draft scenarios.
From the Draft Scenarios section you can:
- Edit a draft to continue working on it before publishing
- Download the scenario to Excel to share with colleagues who don't have platform access
- Delete the scenario
Publishing
When you're ready to publish, the final button in the top navigation bar will read Publish (if you didn't select auto-translations) or Finish (if you did). Clicking either button checks for any remaining incomplete required fields. Once everything's resolved, the Publish button appears and you can publish your scenario.
Once published, your scenario appears in your organization's scenario catalog and can be selected when scheduling a Crisis Simulations exercise. Think of the scenario as the template — an exercise is the instance of that template you assign to participants with a deadline.