Custom Survey Questions

Campaigns and organizations need the flexibility to collect information beyond the standard set of questions previously provided (support score and registration intent). 

Custom survey questions will allow program admins (users with the following roles: owner, admins, and data managers) to create and configure additional survey questions to meet the needs of their campaign. 

Custom survey questions can now be added to canvassing and phone banking programs once they’ve been created in the Survey Question Library in the Outreach menu. This is where all your survey questions (standard and custom) will be listed and where users will be able to see the details for each question.

• Custom survey questions are limited to the district. So if a user has multiple districts (e.g. District A and District B) and creates a survey question in District A, the question will only be available and accessible in District A and not available in District B. 
• A custom survey question can have two states, which a user can set:  
  1. Active state = Available to be added to canvassing and/or phone banking surveys in Programs 
     1. By default when a custom survey question is created they are in active state
  2. Archived state = Not available to be added to a survey and not active in any program
     1. Once a question is archived any responses associated to a voter from the archived question will be removed from the voter
• Standard survey questions are listed in the library but cannot be edited and will always be in “Active” state

• Survey questions are currently not editable after creation
  1. This is to prevent disruption to canvassers and phone bankers while they are performing outreach

Create a Custom Survey Question:

1. Go to Outreach > Custom Survey Question Library and click on the “Create Survey Question” button located near the top right.

2. Each custom survey question will require the following fields:
   1. Name
      1. This is the name of the question 
      2. Must be unique within the workspace
         1. In the future we can make it unique within the district 
      3. 20 character limit 

2. Question Label (auto-generated)
   1. Auto-generated based on the Name
   2. The app will automatically prefill with the first 9 characters of the name for the question label, but user can update the label 
   3. Question label is used on printed PDF packets as way to identify the question under the Surveys column 
      1. For example, survey question name is “Prop 50 Support” and the question label is “Prop 50 S”. This is how the question label will appear on the printed packet under the Surveys column

3. Question:
   1. Content of the question. This is the text that will appear in canvassing and phone banking as the question that will be asked to voters 
   2. 250 character limit 
   3. System will check existing survey questions for the same question text, and if found will alert user and prevent them from saving  

3. Response Options
   1. Minimum of two responses is required to save a custom survey question
   2. With this first version we are only supporting multiple choice response options and can explore additional response type options in the future.
   3. Name
      1. Name of the response code

1. Response Code 
   1. Input here is what shown in the PDF packet as part of the survey question key (second page of instructions) and represents the value for the short code
      1. e.g. Response code = Yes and Short Code = Y so the survey question key will show Y = Yes 
   2. Auto populated with the same text as Name but can be changed by user 
   3. This is the text that will show up as the multiple choice options for logging a response in canvassing and phone banking (e.g. the Yes and No options below) 

4. Acceptable text includes letters, numbers, underscores, colon, and dash. Spaces are not allowed. 
5. Character limit of 5 characters 
6. Short Code 
   1. Input here is what is shown in printed PDF packets as possible responses under the Surveys column and will also appear in the data entry UI
      1. Equivalent to the 1-5 scale for support score 
   2. Autogenerated with the first text of the Name field and can be changed by the user 
   3. Must be unique for the question
   4. Character limit of 1 character
7. Once all fields have been filled out, click “Save” to create the custom survey question 
   1. Editing of the custom survey question is not allowed after creation 
   2. Once a custom survey creation is created it will automatically be set to “Active” state and can be added to a Program. 

Add a Custom Survey Question to a Survey within a Program:

1. Go to the Program in question and click on the “Survey Management” tab
   1. Users are presented with a read only view of their current survey and they can click “Edit” to add or remove questions. What is presented here is also how the survey will appear in canvassing and phone banking.   
      1. By default the two standard survey questions are added to all surveys 

2. Click “Edit” to add, remove, and/or order questions within the survey
   1. Standard survey questions can be removed from the survey 
   2. To add a question, click on the “Add Question” button and select from the drop down of available questions

3. To remove a question, simply click the “X” on the right of the question card 
4. To reorder your questions, click on the 6 dots found on the left side of the card and drag to the desired order. The order set here will be the order seen in canvassing, phone banking, and in print packets. 
   1. Note: For print packets, only the top 3 questions will be included in the print packet due to space limitations.

3. Once you are done adding, removing, and/or reordering questions, click the “Save” button to save your changes. 

Additional Notes for Surveys

• A program must have at least one survey question configured 
• Only one survey can be created per program 
• The survey is applicable to both canvassing and phone banking, so whatever questions that are setup in the survey will be shown for both canvassing and phone banking efforts within the program 
• For printed packets only the top 3 questions will be included in the print packet 
• Program admins are able to add, delete or re-order questions before and after program launch 
• Survey changes render immediately in canvassing and phone banking after a successful save.
• If user configures the standard registration intent survey as the only question for the program:
  • They will see a copy on the survey setup edit screen informing them that registered voters will be excluded from outreaches since the question does not apply to them 

• If the packets configured for the program contain registered targets, user will see the following:
  • In canvassing and phone banking registered voters will still be accessible but canvassers won’t be able to access the “Start Conversation” or “Household/Voter Unavailable" workflows since there are no applicable question(s) to ask the voter 
    • If an additional question is later added to the survey, these voters will become available to canvass since there will be an applicable question to ask them
  • In PDF packets, no survey question will be present for registered voters as there is no applicable question to ask the voter 

Custom Survey Questions in Canvassing and Phone Banking 

With custom survey questions we updated the canvassing flow to display the survey and its questions directly on the page instead of in a modal on both desktop and mobile. On desktop this means the survey will replace the map once the user launches into the “Start Conversation” workflow. The map will reappear once the user goes back to household list view. 

Responses to custom survey questions will also appear as a pill in the voter/target info panel in both Canvassing and Phone Banking. It uses the following survey question fields as inputs:

• Question Name and Response Options > Name 
  • E.g in the screenshot below the “Pro 67: Yes” pill is present since the user answered the “Will you be supporting 67? Question with a “Yes” response 
    • “Prop 67: Yes”
      • Prop 67 = Question Name
      • Yes = Response Name found under Response Options

Custom Survey Questions in Printed PDF Packets and Data Entry UI

In this initial version of custom survey questions the top 3 questions configured in a survey will appear in printed PDF packets and in the data entry UI. Additional questions will not appear due to space restrictions. We may explore solutions for this limitation in the future if printed PDF packets become a more heavily used feature. 

Please note the following for printed PDF packets/data entry UI and custom survey questions:

• For the standard support score question: 
  • If support score IS included in the Program survey configuration, the "Prior Sup." column appears in the PDF packet
  • If support score IS NOT included in the Program's Survey Configuration, the "Prior Sup." column does not appear in the PDF packet
• For the registration intent question:
  • If the voter is already registered, the registration intent question is hidden in the printed packet
  • If the voter is unregistered, the registration intent will be included in the printed PDF packet 
• The question and answer key for custom questions is found on the second page of the instructions page of the printed PDF packet 
• When downloading printed PDF packets, the system will look at the current survey configuration and download that version 
  • Historical versions of PDFs are not stored 
  • Note that once you download a PDF packet it is cached for 1 hour and subsequent downloads of that PDF packet within that hour will not reflect any survey configuration updates
  • Data entry options depend on the survey configuration at the time of data entry, not the survey configuration at the time of PDF generation

Filtering on Custom Survey Question Responses 

Users will be able to filter on custom survey question responses on Home in the same way they can filter on response for standard questions. In the future users will also be able to filter on customer survey question responses in Universe Builder and be able to see logged responses for a voter in Search. 

• All custom survey questions for the district will appear in the "Survey Responses" filter group on Home
  • In the future we will update to remove archived questions in the filters on Home 
• Standard survey questions (Support Score, Registration Intent) appear first followed by custom questions and are listed alphabetically by Name. 

Custom Survey Prompts

Survey prompts allow users to add additional context for the survey and/or individual questions within the survey. This provides clarity and appropriate framing for canvassers and phone bankers for the outreach effort. See flexibility across audiences for examples. 

Survey prompts are specific to the program and the survey within it. They are not saved for re-use in other programs. 

Add a Prompt to a Survey

To add a prompt to a survey:

1. Go to the Program in question and click on the “Survey Management” Tab
   1. Users are presented with a read only view of their current survey and they can click “Edit” to make changes
2. Click “Edit” to add, remove, and/or order prompts within the survey
   1. To add a prompt, click on the “Add Prompt” button
   2. Input desired text for the prompt
      1. Prompts have a max character limit of 1500 and only plain text is allowed
         • Rich text, links or media is not supported at this time
      2. Line breaks are preserved 
      3. When done providing input for the prompt, you can save your survey or add additional prompts or questions to the survey 
   3. To edit a prompt, click on the pencil icon to edit and then click “Save” when done. 
   4. To remove a prompt from the survey, click on the “X” for prompt in question 
   5. Users can order Prompts anywhere in the list, including before the first question, between any two questions, or at the very end.
      1. Reorder your prompts in the same way you would reorder questions, by clicking on the 6 dots found on the left side of the card and dragging to the desired order.
3. Click “Save” when all edits are complete. Users will then be redirected to the read only view of the survey. 
   1. Prompts will be shown with a blue background and questions with a white background 

2. What is displayed in the read only view is also how it will be displayed in canvassing and phone banking 

Additional notes for prompts in surveys: 

• Prompts will not be included in print packets in this initial version 
• Survey changes render immediately in canvassing and phone banking after a successful save as well as print PDF packets 

Roles and Editions 

Roles

• Admins, owners, and data managers are able to create custom survey questions and configure surveys within programs with custom questions and prompts
• Admins, owners, data managers, and volunteers can view the custom survey questions prompts and record responses in canvassing and phone banking 
• Admins, owners, data managers can input data from printed PDF packets via the data entry UI 

Editions

All Editions (Lite, Pro, & Pro+) will be able to create custom survey questions and prompts and configure their survey within a program. Lite accounts will not be able to canvass or phone bank with the survey and will be prompted to upgrade.