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Surveys

The survey module handles the full survey lifecycle: designing the questionnaire, distributing it to internal and external recipients, collecting answers, and closing it.

Questions are designed visually in the survey designer. The design is stored as a schema on the survey record, which means question types, branching, validation and layout are all part of the design rather than system configuration.

Survey states​

StateWhat it means
DraftBeing designed. Nobody can answer it.
PublishedDistributed. Recipients have tasks and can answer.
ClosedNo further answers accepted. Reached either manually or automatically when the end date passes.

Fields​

  • Code / Name — the survey's identity.
  • Private — controls whether participant identities are visible in the results.
  • Anonymous survey — answered through a single public link instead of a participant list. See Anonymous surveys.
  • Start date / end date — the answering window. The start must be earlier than the end.
  • Status — draft, published or closed.
  • Publish date / close date — stamped automatically.
  • Survey schema — the questionnaire design. Required and non-empty before the survey can be published.
  • Distribution lists — internal recipients. See Distribution.
  • External distribution lists — external participants with no user account.

Designing the questionnaire​

The create/edit screen is a wizard with required-field gating: you cannot move on until the current step is complete. The questionnaire itself is built in the visual designer, where you add questions, choose their types, and set validation and branching rules.

note

Once a survey has been published and answered, its questionnaire design is locked. Other fields — name, dates, distribution lists — remain editable. This is deliberate: changing the questions under answers that have already been submitted would make the results meaningless.

Publishing​

Publishing requires:

  • A non-empty questionnaire design.
  • At least one internal distribution entry. A survey addressed only to external participants cannot be published.
  • At least one genuinely new recipient, if you are republishing.

The last two do not apply to an anonymous survey, which has no recipients at all.

On publish the system creates tasks for internal recipients and access links for external ones — see Distribution.

Republishing​

You can add recipients to a published survey and publish again. The system compares the new distribution lists against what already exists and only creates tasks and links for genuinely new recipients — existing recipients are not notified twice.

caution

Removing somebody from a distribution list does not cancel a task that has already been created for them. Removal affects future publishes only.

Closing​

A survey closes in one of two ways:

  • Manually, by closing it from the survey record.
  • Automatically, when the end date passes. A recurring background job closes published surveys whose end date has arrived.

Once closed, no further answers are accepted.

Reminders​

You can send reminders to recipients who have not yet answered. Reminders are queued and sent in the background — they never block the screen. A reminder does nothing if the survey is not currently published.