Build a survey template

What this achieves

A survey template is the question set, written once and reused every time you run the survey. It is the reusable half of a survey programme, and it is what makes this quarter’s results comparable with last quarter’s.

Required role: Administrator.

Before you start

Decide the questions before you open the builder. Changing a question between waves means the two waves are not measuring the same thing, and the trend you were building stops being a trend.

Steps

Go to Engagement → Templates.
Select Create Template.
Under Details, enter the Name.
Choose the Type.
Set Estimated minutes, which is shown to respondents before they start.
Write the Description.
Under Sections & Questions, select Add section and give it a Section title.
Select Add question and write the question text.
Choose the question Type and fill in what it needs.
Choose the Category.
Set Required on or off.
Repeat for each question, then each section.
Leave Active on.
Select Create Template.

Options on this screen

Option	Description
Name	What the template is called. It appears when you pick a template to launch.
Type	Pulse Survey, Full Engagement Survey, eNPS, or Custom.
Estimated minutes	How long it takes. Shown to respondents before they start.
Description	What this survey is for.
Active	Inactive templates are hidden when launching new surveys.

Set Estimated minutes honestly. It is the number a respondent uses to decide whether to start now or later, and a survey that takes three times as long as promised is the one they abandon halfway.

Question types

Option	Description
Rating Scale (1-5)	A numeric rating. You set Scale min, Scale max, and Scale labels.
Likert Scale	An agreement scale, with the same scale settings.
Open Text	A free-text answer.
Multiple Choice	A fixed list. Add each entry with Add option.
eNPS (0-10)	The recommend-as-a-place-to-work question. It uses a fixed 0-10 scale, so there is nothing to configure.
Matrix	One stem with several sub-questions, one per row. Add each with Add row.

Scale labels are comma-separated, one per scale value.

Example: a five-point scale labelled Strongly Disagree, Disagree, Neutral, Agree, Strongly Agree gives the respondent words rather than bare numbers, so two people answering 4 mean the same thing by it.

Sections and categories do different jobs

Sections group related questions for the person answering. Categories group them for the person reading the results.

Option	Description
Section	What the respondent sees as a heading and a group of questions.
Category	The theme a question’s results roll up under, such as manager relationship, growth and development, recognition, or work-life balance.

The category is the more consequential of the two. It is what turns a list of question averages into an engagement score you can read by theme, so a question left uncategorised contributes to the overall picture without telling you which part of the business it is about.

Example: two questions about a manager in different sections of the HC Corp UK Ltd template still roll up together if both carry the manager relationship category.

Required questions

Required stops a respondent submitting without answering. Use it sparingly. A required open-text question is the most common reason someone abandons a survey rather than finishing it, and an abandoned response is worth less than a partial one.

Editing, defaults, and deletion

Open a template to Edit it. Set as Default marks one template as the default.

The templates supplied with the product are marked System and cannot be deleted. For your own, deletion is permanent and the screen says so; surveys already launched from a deleted template keep their own copy of the questions, so past results stay readable.

Prefer switching Active off over deleting. It removes the template from the launch picker without touching anything that used it.

Editing a template that has already been used changes the questions asked in future waves, not the ones already answered. If the meaning of a question needs to change, that is a new template — comparing across a wording change is a comparison to make deliberately.

What happens next

The template becomes selectable when you create a survey. From there you choose who receives it, when it opens and closes, and whether it is anonymous.