Create and launch a survey

What this achieves

Creating a survey takes a template and points it at a group of people, with a window to answer in. Launching it is what sends the invitations and starts collecting responses.

Required role: Administrator.

Before you start

Settle whether the survey is anonymous, how widely to target it, and how narrowly you intend to report the results. Anonymity is fixed for the survey once responses exist, and the target cannot be changed after launch.

Steps

Go to Engagement → Surveys.
Select Create Survey.
Enter the Name.
Choose the Template.
Choose the Target Scope — Whole Company, By Department, or Custom (pick people).
If you chose By Department, tick the Departments.
If you chose Custom (pick people), search under Employees and tick each person.
Set Sampling on if you want only a random subset, and enter the percentage.
Set the Open Date and the Close Date.
Set Anonymous on or off.
Set Recurring on if you want the survey to relaunch on a schedule, and choose the frequency.
Select Save & Launch, or Save as Draft to launch later.

Options on this screen

Option	Description
Name	What this run is called. Name it so you can tell waves apart later.
Template	The question set. Only active templates are offered.
Target Scope	Who receives it.
Sampling	Survey only a random subset of the target population, at a percentage you set.
Open Date	When the survey opens.
Close Date	When it closes.
Anonymous	Strips respondent identity from stored responses. On by default.
Recurring	Automatically launches new waves on a schedule of Weekly, Bi-weekly, Monthly, or Quarterly.

Example: naming a survey Q2 2026 Pulse rather than Pulse means the trend chart is readable a year later without opening anything.

Target scope

Option	Description
Whole Company	Everyone.
By Department	The departments you tick.
Custom (pick people)	The individuals you tick, found by searching.

Example: an HC Corp UK Ltd survey scoped to Engineering and Operations reaches those two departments only, and the response rate is measured against that population rather than the whole company.

Draft or launch

Option	Description
Save as Draft	Creates the survey without sending anything. It sits in the list as Draft until you launch it.
Save & Launch	Creates it and launches it in one action.

Saving as a draft is the safer route for anything targeted at named people or scoped narrowly, because it gives you a chance to check the recipient count before anyone is invited. A draft survey can also be cancelled with nothing sent.

How the survey reaches people

Launching sends each recipient their own invitation with a personal link. The link is single-use: once someone has submitted, reopening it tells them they have already completed the survey, and an invalid or spent link says so rather than letting anyone answer twice.

That is also how the product knows who has not responded yet, which is what makes the response rate and the reminder work. It holds whether or not the survey is anonymous — anonymity governs what is stored with the answers, not whether an invitation was addressed to someone.

Respondents on an anonymous survey see an Anonymous badge on the survey itself and are told on submitting that their response was recorded anonymously. On a survey that is not anonymous they are told their response has been recorded.

Recurring surveys

A recurring survey relaunches on the chosen frequency without anyone doing anything. Set the frequency to match how quickly you can act on a round of results. A survey that keeps arriving while nothing visibly changes trains people not to answer it.

What happens next

An open survey collects responses until the close date, or until you close it early. Results appear on the survey once there is at least one response, and the survey’s numbers feed the engagement dashboard’s trend alongside every other survey you have run.