What it is
Building a survey is authoring the whole run in one place: the question template, the audience, the schedule and the privacy policy. These live together on one surface on purpose — the right schedule and anonymity depend on the template and the people you’re asking, so you decide them side by side rather than in a wizard that hides the connections.
Getting the build right is what makes the results trustworthy. The wrong audience gives you noise; the wrong privacy level gives you silence; the wrong cadence gives you survey fatigue. Authoring it all in view of each other means the survey you launch is coherent — the right questions, to the right people, with a promise they’ll believe.
When to use it
- You’re setting up a new measurement run from scratch
- A pulse needs a specific audience and schedule combined just so
- You want the anonymity policy to match a sensitive question set
- You’re standing up an eNPS or onboarding survey for the first time
How it works
Step by step.
- 1
Choose the template
Pick the question set first — its kind, question count and language set the defaults for everything below, including the privacy level.
- 2
Build the audience
Toggle which groups receive it — workers, candidates, managers — and add filter chips to narrow by site, team or tenure. The count updates as you go.
- 3
Set the schedule
Decide whether it runs once, recurs on a cadence, or fires on an upstream event. The schedule stays in view of the audience so the two stay sensible together.
- 4
Confirm anonymity
Set how identifiable responses are — fully identified, anonymous by cohort, or fully anonymous — matched to how sensitive the questions are.
- 5
Review and create
Read the whole run back in one scroll. When the template, audience, schedule and privacy all fit, create the survey ready to launch.
Worked example
Follow it through.
The scenario
Northwind Workforce wants a confidential onboarding-experience survey for new starters across all sites.
- 1 Choose the "Onboarding experience" template; its default sets cohort-level anonymity.
- 2 Build the audience: workers with tenure under 30 days, all sites — 47 people.
- 3 Set the schedule to fire when onboarding completes for each person.
- 4 Confirm anonymity at the cohort level so new starters answer freely.
- 5 Review the full run and create it.
The result
A confidential, event-triggered onboarding survey is built and ready, reaching each new starter the moment they finish onboarding.
Tips & notes
Good to know.
- Pick the template before the audience — it sets the privacy default and the question kinds everything else depends on.
- Keep an eye on the live audience count; a number that’s too big or too small usually means a filter needs adjusting.
- Event-triggered timing captures feedback while the experience is fresh, which beats a survey that lands weeks later.
- The more sensitive the questions, the more anonymity you should offer — it’s the difference between honest answers and polite ones.
When you’re done
A coherent survey where the questions, audience, schedule and privacy all line up, ready to put in the field.