This change was implented in response to customer wishes for clearer data output and presentation across the product.
Before June 2024, you could make changes and publish the questionnaire multiple times even when it was already collecting data (although we did not recommend doing this). All the data was merged into one dataset, regardless of its publication version.
This made the Excel output often very complicated and slowed down customer workflows. You also had to manually hide all test data to keep it from appearing in the Excel output or in the charts and maps in the analysis tool.
To make analyzing and using response data smoother, we needed to change the way it was presented and organized in Maptionnaire. This meant creating data outputs per publication, both in data download and analysis tool, and introducing a Publish in test mode feature to eliminate the need to re-publish repeatedly.
This change was implemented in June 2024 and communicated via a newsletter. It was also explained in a text that would appear when a user clicked Publish in the questionnaire editor, warning them to not re-publish the questionnaire once in data collection mode.
We initially did not want to completely disable the feature allowing re-publication. However, during the following months, we noticed that there were still surprisingly many edits and re-edits being done to questionnaires already collecting data. This in turn resulted in confused customers who thought some of their data had gone missing, when in reality it was just categorized under a different publication version. To avoid this, we decided to remove the possibility of publishing a questionnaire multiple times in final data collection mode.
It always takes some time to adapt to changes in software. We understand the frustration if you are used to publishing a questionnaire multiple times instead of using the test mode first. This change may require you to revise your workflow when it comes to the final stages before questionnaire launch. Please appreciate, however, that the data output and analysis has in exchange become much, much more efficient.
Should you notice a significant error in a questionnaire that is already collecting data, it is still possible to change and re-publish your questionnaire by contacting our customer support. Re-publishing separates any new answer data from the data collected so far, so customer support will also ask the developers to merge the publication versions in the backend, whenever feasible (=questions have not changed). This enables you to get all your survey answers in one dataset.
We welcome all feedback regarding this change!