Once your survey is ready, you can publish it. You can control the public visibility of a published survey through setting start and end dates. Please note that you can still make changes to your questionnaire even after publication — simply remember to re-publish it every time so that the changes are activated. Re-publishing happens in the same way as publishing for the first time. It won't affect your data or the URL of the survey.
Once published, you can distribute the survey link to test respondents for testing. To read about how to separate test data from the actual response data, click here.
Before you send the survey to respondents, remember to go through this checklist!
We also have the following video guide:
Before publishing my questionnaire, I would like to show it to people who are not in my Maptionnaire team. Can I share a link to the preview version?
Unfortunately, it is not possible to share the preview of a questionnaire with anyone not in your Maptionnaire team. However, you can easily do this by publishing your questionnaire and sharing the link to that.
I'm testing my questionnaire in preview mode but any map points I place don't seem to be saved, instead the system seems to be stuck on loading the point forever. Is this a bug?
No, as currently the preview mode is meant only to test how the questionnaire looks like visually rather than to test the actual responding function. Once you have published your questionnaire, you can test responding to the questionnaire.
Can I make changes to the questionnaire once I have published it and am collecting data?
Yes you can, with two exceptions: the data names/option identifiers and the default language. If you make a lot of changes to the survey during the testing period (i.e. changing and deleting questions or moving their order), it may also be a good idea to erase the entire publication history before data collection. You can do this by creating a copy of the survey (questionnaires main view > three-dot menu of survey card > Copy), publishing it and archiving the original survey. This will clear all publication history and test data. Remember to always re-publish the survey when you have made any editing to it. Otherwise the changes won't be activated.
I've made some changes to my published questionnaire, but they don't appear on the questionnaire. What's wrong?
Most likely, you have not re-published the questionnaire. If the problem persists even after this, try troubleshooting according to the element-type that is having the issue.
If I re-publish the questionnaire, will the URL (web address, link) be affected? Will the data already collected be affected?
The answer to both questions is no, it won't be affected. Once you have published your questionnaire one time, the URL is stable and remains the same regardless of republishing. Any information collected will also be retained. The only thing that may affect the results is changing the data names or option identifiers after publication, which is why you should not alter these settings after the draft-stage.
Is re-publishing a separate function?
No, you re-publish the survey in exactly the same way you did in the beginning. There is no separate 're-publishing' button.
I'm trying to publish my survey but I get a warning saying Validation error?
This means that some of the data names in your survey are either missing or the same. Data names are used to track and order response data so that each response is linked to a specific question. You can fix this in the same warning 'box', simply write a new data name in the New data name box. A data name can be anything, such as a random string of numbers and letters. The system will always inform you if the one you have written is unsuitable, so don't stress about what you enter as the new data name.
What happens after the last publication date of my questionnaire (the one you set under the General tab in questionnaire settings) is past?
After the end date, no one can view the questionnaire or leave responses.
What if I don't set a start date for my questionnaire?
If you don't set a start date, then your questionnaire is accessible immediately after publication. Setting a start date is in other ways a means to control the visibility of your survey.
How do I close a questionnaire?
If you have set up start and end dates for the survey, you don't need to do anything to close a survey from the public. If you haven't set these dates and would like to still like to close your survey, you can always add the start and end dates at any point (the start date can be in the past) and activate this change by re-publishing.
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