USER GUIDE
Surveys
Ask your community questions and gather answers — polls, feedback, and quick surveys that visitors complete right on your website.
Before you begin
Surveys need no special setup — you can create one on an empty site straight away. It helps to:
- Write out your questions and their answer choices ahead of time.
- Decide whether respondents should see the running results after they answer (you can turn this on or off).
- Know when you want the survey to start and stop accepting responses, if it is only open for a set period.
Surveys live in the left sidebar. Go to Left menu › Surveys to open the Manage Surveys list, where you build surveys, edit them, and read the results.
1 Find your surveys (Manage Surveys)
Open Left menu › Surveys › Manage Surveys. The list shows each survey's Name (click it to edit) and when it was last Updated. On a new site the list is empty and offers a link to add your first survey.
2 Add a survey
Click Add Survey, fill in the details below, and click Save New Survey.
| Field | What it does |
|---|---|
| Public Title | The title visitors see. Required. |
| URL | The web address for the survey. Filled in automatically from the title; you can customize it. Must be unique on your site. |
| Internal Name | A name only staff see, to help you identify the survey in your list. Required. |
| Description | Optional intro text shown above the questions, edited with the Page Editor. |
| Begin Date | Optional. The survey will not appear to the public before this date. |
| End Date | Optional. The survey will stop appearing after this date. |
| Public Results | When checked, respondents see the running results after they submit. When unchecked, they just see a thank-you message. |
| Display Title | When checked, the survey's public title shows on the form. |
| Primary Department | Optional. The department or group that owns the survey (label may vary by site). |
After saving, the survey opens for editing with a General tab (its settings plus the questions) and a Survey Results tab. The Save button becomes Save Survey, and there is a View link to preview the live survey.
3 Add questions and answer options
On the edit page's General tab, click New Survey Question (there is a button above and below the list). A question card appears. Fill it in:
| Field | What it does |
|---|---|
| Question | The question text shown to respondents. |
| Sort Order | A number that sets where this question appears. Lower numbers come first. |
| Answer Type | How people answer — Multiple Choice (pick one from a list), Checkbox (a yes/no box), Text (type a free answer), or HTML (static text/heading with no answer). |
| Answer Required | When checked, respondents must answer this question before submitting. |
For a Multiple Choice question, add the options: click New Choice on the question card, then give each choice a Name (the text people see) and an Order number. Add as many choices as you need. Each question and choice has its own Delete button if you change your mind.
4 Publish the survey
There is no separate "Publish" button. A survey goes live once it has a name and a saved URL, and it stays live based on your dates:
- Leave Begin Date and End Date blank to make the survey available immediately and indefinitely.
- Set a Begin Date to schedule it for the future.
- Set an End Date to automatically close it.
Use the View link on the edit page to open the survey's public web address and confirm it looks right. You can also place a survey inside a page using the survey widget/token in the Page Editor, or link directly to its URL from a menu.
5 View results
Open the survey and click the Survey Results tab. For each question you will see a bar chart with the number of responses and the percentage for every answer choice — a quick, visual read on how people responded.
For a full record, click Export to CSV to download every response as a spreadsheet, including the answer, the date and time, and technical details for each submission. Open it in Excel to sort, filter, and report.
Next steps
Promote your survey by linking it from a navigation menu, featuring it on a department page, or announcing it in a News post. See the User Guides index for Pages, Menus, and News.