Epic Skills Assessment Epic Skills Assessment: Software Development 5 — Questions and Answers
Question 1: What is the purpose of the 'Epic Rover' application in the context of software development and testing?
- A mobile application for nurses to perform bedside documentation and scanning workflows (Correct answer)
- A code-review tool that scans Epic configuration records for syntax errors before deployment
- A performance monitoring dashboard showing real-time Cache server metrics
- A mobile MDM solution for pushing Epic Hyperspace updates to workstations
Correct answer: A mobile application for nurses to perform bedside documentation and scanning workflows
Epic Rover is a mobile application designed for bedside clinical workflows including medication administration scanning and patient documentation, and developers must test barcode and workflow scenarios within it.
Question 2: When developing an Epic Cosmos query, what type of data source is the developer accessing?
- A single organization's Clarity data warehouse instance
- A de-identified, aggregated dataset pooled from multiple Epic customer organizations (Correct answer)
- Epic's internal benchmark database used for performance testing
- A real-time feed of Chronicles operational data via streaming APIs
Correct answer: A de-identified, aggregated dataset pooled from multiple Epic customer organizations
Epic Cosmos is a pooled, de-identified research database aggregating clinical data from dozens of Epic customer organizations, enabling cross-institutional analytics at scale.
Question 3: In Epic's upgrade methodology, what is the purpose of 'Upgrade Guides' provided to technical staff?
- Step-by-step scripts for migrating all custom configuration from one version to the next automatically
- Documentation detailing breaking changes, new features, and required manual review tasks for each upgrade (Correct answer)
- A checklist of hardware prerequisites that must be validated before Epic software can be installed
- Release notes generated by Epic's QA team summarizing bugs fixed in the new version
Correct answer: Documentation detailing breaking changes, new features, and required manual review tasks for each upgrade
Epic's Upgrade Guides detail breaking changes, deprecated features, new configuration options, and manual review tasks that technical staff must address during each upgrade cycle.
Question 4: A developer is asked to implement row-level security in Clarity so that users only see data for their own department. What is the recommended approach?
- Add a WHERE clause to every stored procedure referencing the department ID
- Use SQL Server Row-Level Security (RLS) policies tied to the user's database login context (Correct answer)
- Create a separate Clarity schema per department and grant schema-level permissions
- Filter data through an Epic-managed database view that applies the department context
Correct answer: Use SQL Server Row-Level Security (RLS) policies tied to the user's database login context
SQL Server Row-Level Security (RLS) policies are the recommended approach for department-scoped data access in Clarity, as they enforce filtering transparently at the database engine level.
Question 5: What is the function of the 'Prelude' module in Epic's software suite relevant to a developer building registration workflows?
- It manages the pre-authorization and insurance eligibility verification workflows
- It is Epic's patient registration module handling demographics, guarantors, and coverage assignment (Correct answer)
- It controls the pre-login authentication gateway for Hyperspace workstations
- It is the pre-production testing environment where registration builds are validated
Correct answer: It is Epic's patient registration module handling demographics, guarantors, and coverage assignment
Prelude is Epic's patient registration module, covering demographics intake, guarantor assignment, insurance coverage entry, and scheduling — the foundation of the patient record.
Question 6: When a developer configures an Epic Decision Support Rule, what distinguishes a 'hard stop' from a 'soft stop'?
- A hard stop permanently blocks the action and cannot be overridden, while a soft stop allows the user to acknowledge and proceed (Correct answer)
- A hard stop fires synchronously during save while a soft stop fires asynchronously in a background job
- A hard stop logs the event to a compliance audit trail while a soft stop does not
- A hard stop requires supervisor approval via an escalation workflow, while a soft stop only requires the user's confirmation
Correct answer: A hard stop permanently blocks the action and cannot be overridden, while a soft stop allows the user to acknowledge and proceed
Hard stops completely block a workflow action until a condition is corrected, while soft stops warn the user but allow them to acknowledge the alert and continue.
Question 7: In Epic's release cycle, what is meant by 'shadow testing' an upgrade?
- Running the new Epic version on a parallel server while production traffic is mirrored to both environments simultaneously
- Having a subset of super-users perform all their normal daily tasks in the upgraded environment before go-live (Correct answer)
- Executing automated regression test bundles overnight without any user involvement
- Deploying the upgrade to a single department as a controlled pilot before full rollout
Correct answer: Having a subset of super-users perform all their normal daily tasks in the upgraded environment before go-live
Shadow testing in Epic upgrades means having key users (super-users or analysts) perform real daily workflows in the upgraded environment to catch issues before all staff are affected.
Epic Skills Assessment Epic Skills Assessment: Software Development 5
What is the purpose of the 'Epic Rover' application in the context of software development and testing?