An Individual Response Report produces an archivable PDF from every single respondent's responses, sent automatically, either to the respondent themselves, to a recipient such as your organization's registry or planning department, or both. This article covers both flows and how to set each one up.
Tier availability: Not included by default in Collect or Communicate. This is a paid add-on that can be purchased for a survey, on any tier.
What is the Individual Response Report?
Two common reasons to turn this on:
- To archive an official record of public hearing comments. Route each response to your organization's registry or planning department automatically as it comes in, so there's a dated, individual PDF for the official file - no manual copying or exporting needed.
- To give respondents a copy of their own submission. Useful for formal comment periods, or any process where people expect confirmation of what they submitted.
You can turn on either use case alone, or both together.
The two flows, and how they relate
This feature actually does two separate things, and it's easy to set up one without realizing the other is a separate toggle:
- Sending the respondent a copy of their own answers as a PDF, by email, right after they submit.
- Routing a copy of every response to one or more recipients in your organization - a registry, a planning department, a project lead - also automatically, right after submission.
You can turn on either flow alone, or both together. Neither is triggered manually - once set up, both fire automatically on survey submission. Set up each flow separately below.
Before you start
You'll need:
- Edit access to the questionnaire.
- If you want the respondent flow: an Open question element in the survey asking for the respondent's email address (this is where the PDF gets sent, and it's also how the system confirms the address is real - see step 3 below).
Set up: sending respondents their own PDF
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Go to questionnaire editor > Settings. Choose the tab PDF report email.
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Turn on Send PDF report to respondent. A text field appears below it where you can write the message that accompanies the PDF – this is what the respondent sees in the email, separate from any message you write for internal recipients in the next section.
By default, any map responses will use MapTiler Streets as the background. If you want, you can also specify a WMTS map of your own to be used instead.
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Add an Open question to your survey asking for the respondent's email address (if you haven't already). Open that question's extra/advanced settings and turn on Validate email. This is what tells the system which question on the form holds the address the PDF should go to - without it, the respondent flow won't know where to send anything.
- Test that it works by publishing the survey in test mode and submitting your email.
Set up: sending a copy to your registry or another recipient
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In the same settings section, under Additional email recipients, click the + button.
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Enter the recipient's email address (for example, your registry's intake address). Write the subject and message for this recipient - it can be different from the message respondents see.
- To notify more people internally (a project lead, for instance), click + again and add them the same way. There's no fixed limit on how many additional recipients you can add.
Using your own map on the PDF
The map shown on the PDF report defaults to MapTiler Streets. If you'd rather use a different background, you can supply your own WMTS map instead – it needs to support the WGS84 coordinate system. This is separate from whatever map type the survey itself uses; they don't have to match.
A note on cost: Maptionnaire doesn't charge for this, but the WMTS source itself typically isn't free - budget roughly a few hundred euros a year if you're sourcing one from a third-party provider (for example, a national land survey / mapping agency in your country).
If you need help setting up a custom map source, contact support@maptionnaire.com.