Surveys

A survey is a questionnaire from the team, with several questions organized in sections, for whoever has access to a space in the community and/or for anyone with the public link. Use it to measure the community's NPS, satisfaction with an event or a course, a company's eNPS, or whatever else the team wants to ask, without Google Forms or Typeform, with the consolidated results inside the community.

Surveys is a space module, on the Community tab of Add Space. Every survey lives in a Surveys space, and whoever has access to the space is its audience.

#Survey or poll

For a quick everyday question, a poll. For structured feedback, a survey.

#What it's for

#How it works

#The space: one survey or several

When you create the space, How the space works asks:

One survey only works with at most one survey in the space (drafts and closed ones count): switching to it with two or more is refused, and so is a second survey. The mode can be changed later in the space settings.

The space is born with its survey. In One survey, Next leads to a third step, Survey, in the same window: Start from (a template or Blank), Survey title (required), Description, Mode (identified or anonymous) and Response type. Create survey creates the space and the survey, as a draft, and opens its editor right away: "The survey is born as a draft: nobody gets anything until you open it." If the survey is refused, the space stays created, the step keeps what was typed and only the survey is retried. Spaces with one call and one course work the same way: they end up open on the call or the course.

An example: an Event survey space, in One survey mode, private to whoever bought a ticket; and a Surveys space, in Several surveys mode, open to members, with the semester's NPS and each course's surveys.

#Who does what

#Templates

New survey opens the template picker. The questions come ready, in the community's language, and everything can be edited before opening.

#Sections

Every survey has at least one section, with a title and an optional description; each question belongs to a section. For whoever answers, sections are steps:

• The survey's title and introduction open the first screen, with the mode (anonymous or identified), the number of steps and questions, and the Start button.
• At the top, a bar with each step's title (Content · Infrastructure · Experience · Profile). On a phone it becomes "Step 2 of 4 · Infrastructure". A single-section survey shows no bar.
• Next only moves on once the step's required questions are answered; Back keeps what was chosen; Submit appears on the last step.
• The response is saved once, on Submit. Nothing is kept on the server halfway: if the person closes the tab first, they start again.

In the results, questions are grouped by section, in the same order. A survey has up to 20 sections and 100 questions.

#The editor

Building a survey means editing the very screen people answer on, in the community's colors, as in the campaign editor:

• Click to type in place: title, introduction, section title and description, question, help text and options.
• Sections show up as the steps, in tabs at the top of the canvas; Section creates a new one. Delete section removes its questions too, after you confirm.
• The + between questions inserts a question (one of the 5 types) or a new section.
• Drag by the handle to reorder questions within a section; drag a question onto another step's tab to move it there; drag the tabs to reorder sections. Move to section, Up and Down, in the panel, do the same without dragging.
• The selected question's panel has Type, Required, the scale options, Duplicate (copies the options too, handy when the same scale repeats) and Delete.
• Desktop and Phone change the width; Preview walks through the steps as a respondent, with Submit (preview), without saving anything.

At the top sit Audience and link, Mode, Response type, Period, Preview, Save draft and Open (or Schedule, with a future start). On a scheduled survey, Cancel schedule replaces Open; on an open one, Close. Next to the title you see Unsaved changes or All saved.

The editor's bar shows only the title, the state and the main action; the settings become clickable summaries, and Pause, Close and Delete sit in More actions. The mode notice sits above the intro, and an identified survey whose intro talks about anonymity shows "The intro talks about anonymity, but the survey is identified.", with Fix the text. Templates show their first questions before you choose.

#The 5 question types

Any question can be Required. There is no conditional logic (skipping questions based on an answer), no matrix and no file upload.

#Identified or anonymous

The Mode is chosen in the draft and does not change once open. The introduction states the mode before the first question.

In an anonymous survey, the introduction says exactly: "Anonymous survey: the community can't link your response to you." That is the promise: the community (team, API, assistant, CSV) has no way to know who answered what. The response is stored without the person and without a time, separately from the record that they have answered, and responses never appear in the order they arrived.

The safeguards of an anonymous survey:

• A minimum of 3 responses. Before that, the results show "Results appear at 3 responses" and no number or text.
• Published in blocks of 3. Responses enter the results 3 at a time, always 3 new ones from the same origin (members or visitors). The response count grows by 3, and a single response never changes the results: comparing two readings does not reveal what one person answered.
• Filter by origin only. In an anonymous survey, results filter only by members or visitors; group, tag and company are for identified surveys only. The slice shows when it and the rest each have at least 3 responses. Without the rule about the rest, a slice of 3 in a survey of 4 would give away the fourth person by subtraction.
• Texts shuffled and undated.
• A CSV without the person, segment, origin or date, only from 3 responses and only with the responses already published in blocks of 3.

In an identified survey, the response is personal data held by the community, which is the controller. Don't ask about health, religion, political opinion or other sensitive data in an identified survey; if you need to, use an anonymous one.

#Audience and link

The audience is whoever has access to the space: its visibility and, in a private space, the groups, products and plans under Who gets in. The survey needs someone with access to the space, the public link turned on, or both.

• Audience: Audience and link shows how many people have access to the space today (up to 50,000), with a few names. To change who answers, change the space's access. The audience is frozen when the survey opens: whoever gets access to the space later is not part of it.

• E-mail invitation: on opening, with the Notify by e-mail box checked (the default), each person in the audience gets one invitation e-mail, 10 minutes later, with the Answer button, if they kept the Surveys category on in E-mails from this community. Editing the survey later doesn't resend it. The button leads everyone to the same address, so the e-mail doesn't tie anyone to an anonymous response.

• Link for members: the invitation address. Whoever has access to the space answers through it, signed in, or right in the space. Someone who opens it signed in and has no access sees "This survey is not for you" (unless the public link is on).

  The invitation link opens the survey inside its space, with the community menu. Whoever answers lands on the form (or on the answered or closed notice, as the case may be); the owner and the admin land on the editor if the survey is a draft or scheduled, or on the results if it is open or closed. If no space in the person's menu holds the survey, the standalone answer screen explains why. In a Several surveys space, the browser address follows the open survey: you can copy it, send it to someone on the team and reload the page without going back to the list.

• Space: while it is a draft, the survey can move to another Surveys space.

• Public link: anyone with the link answers without signing in, on the community's own domain (its custom domain, if any, or its memberfy.net address, such as clube.memberfy.net/s/…), with the community's branding, even if the community is private (the page shows only the survey). Copy copies the address; turning it off makes the link say "This link isn't available". The address is long and random: you cannot guess another survey's.

Who already answered. Through the public link, repeat responses are blocked on a best-effort basis, not guaranteed:

• Someone who opens the link without signing in gets a marker in this browser (the screen says: "We keep a marker in this browser only to prevent repeat responses"). In the same browser, the second attempt sees "You already answered in this browser. Thank you!". A private window, another browser, another device or cleared browser data answer again. If the survey truly needs one response per person, use the space's audience without the public link.
• Someone who opens it signed in and is a member of the survey's community answers as a member, truly once, in any browser: the second attempt sees "You already answered". The response follows the survey's mode. Signed in to another community, they count as a visitor.

Against bots and abuse, the public link has:

• a bot check done by the browser itself in about a second, with nothing to click and no data sent to third parties (if it fails, the screen asks to submit again);
• a limit of 300 submissions every 10 minutes per network, per survey (above it, "Too many submissions from this network. Wait a few minutes and try again.");
• a cap of 5,000 visitor responses per survey; member responses don't count toward the cap;
• and the team can turn the link off at any time.

The network address of whoever answers is not stored with the survey.

#Period and scheduling

Period sets the Start and the End of collection, in the community's time zone: "Outside that period nobody answers." The end must be after the start.

• Without a Start (On open), the survey begins when the team clicks Open.
• With a future Start, the button becomes Schedule. The confirmation says when it opens and from when the e-mail invitation goes out: "The survey opens on its own on … and the e-mail invitation goes out from …. Nothing is sent before then." At that time the survey opens by itself, exactly as if the team had clicked Open: the audience is frozen at that moment and the invitation goes out 10 minutes later (if Notify by e-mail was ticked when scheduling).
• Scheduled, it stays editable like a draft, all of it (questions, mode, response type, period). Cancel schedule (or clearing the Start) turns it back into a draft: "Schedule canceled: the survey is a draft again."
• With an End, it closes by itself on the chosen date and time. Without one, it stays open until someone on the team clicks Close.

Outside the period nobody answers, by any route (in the space, through the invitation link or through the public link). Before the start, the screen says "This survey has not started yet" and when it opens; after the end, or once closed, the public link shows "Survey closed". A closed survey does not reopen; the responses and the results remain available.

#Response type

Response type says how much the community counts on an answer. It is chosen in the draft (or in the Survey step of a one-survey space) and locks on opening.

The type applies to whoever entered the audience when it opened; someone who gained access to the space later sees the survey as optional. On identified surveys, required and immediate show in the results who still has to answer (see The results).

Once open, the structure locks: only the title, the introduction, the period's End and the public link (on or off) change, with Save changes. The Start, the Mode and the Response type no longer change.

Deleting the space deletes its surveys and turns off their public links.

#When someone leaves the community

When a member leaves the community (on their own, removed by the team, through the assistant, when the link to their company ends, or by declining an import invitation), their identified responses are permanently deleted, and the results recalculate. Anonymous responses stay, because there is no way to know whose they are. This is the only exception to Memberfy keeping the community's data.

#Step by step

#Create the space

Role: owner or admin.

1. In the menu, under the section, click Add Space.
2. On the Community tab, choose Surveys and click Next.
3. Write the title, choose the Visibility (and, if it is Private, Who gets in): that is who will answer.
4. In How the space works, choose Several surveys or One survey. With Several surveys, create the space.
5. With One survey, Next leads to the Survey step: choose the template (or Blank), the title, the description, the Mode and the Response type, and click Create survey. The space and the survey are born together and the editor opens; continue from Create and open the survey, step 3.

See Create and organize spaces.

#Create and open the survey

1. In the space, click New survey (in One survey mode, Create survey).
2. Pick a template, or Blank.
3. Adjust the title, introduction, sections and questions right on the canvas. Check it in Preview.
4. In Mode, choose Identified or Anonymous. In Response type, Optional survey, Required survey or Immediate response.
5. In Audience and link, check how many people have access to the space and, if you like, turn on the Public link. In Period, the Start (empty to begin on open) and the End, if any.
6. Save draft. Until it opens, nobody sees the survey, not even through the link.
7. Open and confirm: the dialog says how many people the e-mail invitation goes to. The audience is frozen and the survey starts accepting responses. With a future Start, the button is Schedule: the survey becomes Scheduled and opens by itself at the set time.
8. If the public link is on, share the address, copied from Audience and link.

#Answer (member)

Whoever has access to the space answers in two ways: opening the space in the menu (in Several surveys mode, clicking Answer) or through the Answer button in the e-mail invitation. A survey already answered shows as Answered; a required one, as Required. A scheduled survey does not show to respondents until it opens; whoever arrives early through the link sees "This survey has not started yet".

The in-app notice. Only for required and immediate response surveys: on entering the community, whoever is in the audience and has not answered yet sees a single notice ("A survey is waiting for your answer"), with each survey, the deadline and whether it is Anonymous. Clicking a survey opens the answer. On a required survey, Not now closes the notice for those surveys, and it doesn't come back for them. On an immediate response survey there is no Not now: the notice comes back on every screen until the person answers or the survey closes. Answering takes the survey off the notice. An optional survey opens no notice: it arrives by the e-mail invitation and the space list.

#See the results

In the space, click an open or closed survey (a draft opens the editor); in One survey mode, the results show up directly once it is open. The list shows, for each one, recipients, responses and the deadline.

#The results

The header. The survey title, its state (Open, Closed…), whether it is Identified or Anonymous and the deadline, with Edit and Export CSV. On an anonymous survey, the (i) next to Anonymous explains the anonymity rules (the blocks and the filter by origin only). On a phone, the buttons show only their icon.

The sections, as tabs. Right below come the tabs Summary, Individual responses (identified only), Rounds (recurring only) and Heat map (identified only). The filters sit on the same line: Origin (All, members or visitors) and Segment (a group, a tag or a company; All segments goes back to everything). On a phone, the filters are under Filters. A survey with no other tabs shows the origin as buttons.

The cards at the top. Only the ones with something to say, splitting the row evenly:

Responses per day. A chart of how many responses came in each day, in the community's time zone, following the filter. On an anonymous survey, no response keeps its time: the chart is called Responses published per day and counts the blocks that entered the results each day, never when someone answered. Responses published before this tracking show in a note below ("N responses published before daily tracking are not in the chart."). The chart shows only with at least two days and some response. On an anonymous survey filtered by Origin or Segment, when part of the responses was published before the daily log, the chart is not shown; instead you see "The per-day chart is not available for this segment."

One card per question, grouped by section (the section's name shows when there is more than one), in two columns on a wide screen. Each card says the type and how many people answered:

• Single and multiple choice: bars with the percentage and the count; the most chosen option is highlighted.
• NPS: the score (from −100 to 100: % of promoters minus % of detractors), the three groups and the 0 to 10 histogram with the Average. Promoters are 9 and 10, passives 7 and 8, detractors 0 to 6.
• Scale: the Average and the histogram of the ratings.
• Text: the answers as a list (up to 1,000 per question). With more than 4, the first 4 show, with the Search responses box and See all (N).
• A question nobody answered says "Nobody answered this question yet."

Empty states. With no response at all: "No responses yet", with "Results show up here as soon as the first responses come in." (or "The survey closed with no responses."). With a filter that matches nothing: "No responses in this segment." On an anonymous survey with fewer than 3 published responses: "Results appear at 3 responses", with no number, and the explanation: after that, the results grow in blocks of 3 responses, published every hour, so nobody can tell who just answered.

In the other tabs:

• Individual responses: identified only, with the member's name (or Visitor) and the date, newest first.
• Still to answer: only on an identified survey with Required survey or Immediate response, above the summary: the names of those in the audience who have not answered yet, with the count ("Showing N of M." when the list is long), or "Everyone in the audience has answered." On an anonymous survey, the results say nothing about who or how many are missing, in any response type: comparing the count before and after a response would reveal who answered.
• Filter: one at a time. On an anonymous survey, only Origin, with the minimum of 3 and the complement rule.
• Export CSV: one row per response and one column per question, with the section in the header. On an identified survey, it starts with name, e-mail, origin and response date; on an anonymous one, only the responses already published, shuffled, and only from 3 on. The Heat map and the Rounds have their own export.

#Recurring survey and heat map

#Repeat the survey

To measure the climate or the eNPS from time to time without recreating the survey, turn on Repeat in Survey period (the Period button), with the survey as a draft:

Save and turn on repeat. The survey gets the Recurring badge and the summary shows Repeat active, the schedule ("Day 1 of every month, 09:00 · open 7 days") and the Next round. It has no Open: it only opens in rounds.

• Each round is a copy of the survey that opens by itself on the day and time, with the current audience (whoever has access to the space at that moment), sends the invitation and closes at the end of the duration. The mode (identified or anonymous) and the rules for publishing the results apply to each round.
• Each person answers once per round; an answer in one round does not count for another.
• Changing the questions applies only to the next rounds. The recurring survey stays editable; the open round keeps the questions it opened with.
• Pause repeat stops opening new rounds, without closing the open round; Resume repeat brings the schedule back. End repeat asks for confirmation and cannot be undone: no new round opens, past rounds stay in the results and the open one runs until it closes.
• In a One survey space, whoever answers lands on the most recent open round. Deleting the recurring survey deletes its rounds.

#Rounds and evolution

In the results of a recurring survey, the Rounds tab opens first:

• a line chart per NPS or scale question, with the Evolution by round;
• the table of rounds, with Opened, Responses, Rate and each question's value, and View result to open that round's results.

The Round selector, at the top, switches the round of the summary, the responses and the map. In an anonymous survey, a round with fewer than 3 responses and a round still open show no number.

#Heat map

In an identified survey (recurring or not), the Heat map tab shows where the rating is better or worse:

• Group by: Primary group, Tag or Company, one at a time. For tag and company, whoever has more than one counts in each row;
• one column per NPS and scale question, the Responses column and the total row;
• each cell with the value, the response count and a five-band color, from Worse to Better. The map uses the person's group, tag and company at the time they answered, and counts only member responses;
• in a recurring survey, the map is the one for the chosen round, with each cell's Change against the previous round;
• Export map (CSV) downloads what is on screen.

The heat map groups by a compact control, names the columns Q1, Q2… with the questions below, explains the change arrow ("+3 vs. previous round") and has a single export. Also in an identified survey, a group with fewer than 3 responses shows as Too few answers, with no number.

In an anonymous survey, the heat map is not available.

Rounds and the map are for the owner and the admin; the moderator and members don't see them.

#Example: an event's satisfaction survey

A tech event just ended and the organizers want to hear from everyone who came, member or not:

1. New survey › Event feedback, in the event's space. Title: Event satisfaction survey. Introduction: "Thanks for joining the 10th edition! It takes less than 2 minutes."
2. The four sections are already there: Content, Infrastructure, Experience and Profile. In Content, the team adds "Quality of the APIs track" with Duplicate on a ready question (the Excellent…Not applicable scale comes along) and creates a single choice with its own options: "The length of the talks was…" Too short, Just right, Too long.
3. Mode: Anonymous and Public link on (both are the template's default). The survey lives in an Event survey space, in One survey mode, private to the ticket product: whoever bought it gets the e-mail invitation on opening. Deadline: one week.
4. Open, copy the public link and post it in the event's group, for people without an account.
5. Attendees answer on their phones, with no account, in four steps. At the third response, the results appear and from then on change 3 at a time; the Origin filter splits members and visitors once each side has at least 3.

#Through the assistant (MCP)

The owner and the admin can do almost everything in the space through the assistant: create the Surveys space (with the mode), see the templates, create the survey in the space with sections and questions, the period (starts_at, closes_at) and the response type (response_mode), edit the draft or the scheduled survey (or move it to another space), check the audience's reach, open or schedule it (open_survey with a future starts_at schedules; a null starts_at cancels), turn on the link (the answer carries the public address), read the results with a filter (with who still has to answer, identified surveys only), list individual responses and export the CSV. Opening and scheduling (because they send the e-mail invitation), closing and deleting ask for your confirmation; the rest acts on the first call. The Run a survey recipe builds it, opens it and summarizes the results with you.

Any member can ask the assistant which surveys are waiting for their answer (list_my_pending_surveys), with the link to answer in the app and each one's response type (response_mode).

The recurring survey also works through the assistant, with recurrence in create_survey and update_survey, pausing, resuming and ending the repeat (ending asks to confirm), the rounds, the evolution and the identified survey's heat map, with the CSV. See Tools · Members.

Answering a survey through the assistant doesn't exist: the record of what the assistant does on someone's behalf would identify who answered. See Tools · Members.

get_survey_results also returns activity, the responses per day: on an anonymous survey, the count is of the responses published each day, and the assistant never says when someone answered.

#Common errors and how to fix them

#In the API

The space is module: "surveys", with moduleConfig.mode single or multi when creating and editing the space; GET and PUT /api/surveys/spaces/{spaceId} read and change the mode (in single, the GET brings the survey). The team's routes live under /api/surveys (owner and admin, with X-CommunityId): templates, list (?spaceId=), create (with spaceId, required), edit (in a draft or a scheduled survey, the whole tree of sections and questions, and spaceId to move it), audience preview (spaceId or surveyId), open, close, delete, results with one filter (groupId, tag, companyId or origin; in an anonymous survey only origin, the others return 422), individual responses and CSV. A member lists the surveys they can answer at GET /api/surveys?spaceId=, with alreadyResponded. The open ones still waiting for their answer are at GET /api/surveys/pending (with each one's responseMode, notice if the in-app notice should show and blocking if an immediate response one is pending), and one survey's notice is closed at POST /api/surveys/{id}/notice/dismiss. The two public routes, /api/public/surveys/{publicToken}, serve the survey and take the response without sign-in. Before submitting, the public page requests a challenge from /api/public/surveys/{publicToken}/challenge, which the browser solves and sends with the response.

Period and response type. Create and edit take startsAt and closesAt (the end after the start) and responseMode (optional, the default, required or immediate), in a draft or a scheduled survey. Opening with a future startsAt schedules it: status becomes scheduled (the statuses are draft, scheduled, open and closed) and the survey opens by itself at startsAt; startsAt: null cancels. In the results, pending (count, members, truncated) only comes on identified surveys with required or immediate; on anonymous ones the field does not exist.

Responses per day. GET /api/surveys/{id}/results returns activity (null when locked), counts only, in the community's time zone and following the filter: basis, timeZone, days ([{ date, count }]), lastAt, lastWeek (how many in the last 7 days) and untracked. On an identified survey, basis is response and counts each response on its day. On an anonymous one, basis is publication: an anonymous response keeps no time, so the count is of the blocks published every hour, on the day they were published; untracked are the responses published before this tracking existed.

#Related

• Modules
• Visibility and access
• E-mail campaigns
• Polls
• Groups and org chart
• Tags
• Roles and permissions
• Tools · Members