Starting, Ending and Managing Surveys

Every survey lives in the survey library, under Surveys then Library in the sidebar. A survey is always in one of three states: Draft, Running or Ended. A new survey always starts as a draft.

The library

The library has five views: Running, Draft, Ended, All and Archived. Running surveys sort first, then drafts, then ended ones, newest first within each. The search box matches on the survey's name.

Each row has a menu with Details, Edit, Results, Start, End, Duplicate, Archive and Delete. An action that does not apply to the survey right now is shown disabled with the reason next to it, for example Start on a survey that is already running.

Opening a survey shows two tabs, Overview and Results. A draft opens on Overview, because there is nothing to read yet; any other survey opens on Results.

Starting a survey

Use Start Survey on the survey's page. Pertento asks you to confirm, and the wording is worth reading: the survey begins collecting responses at the next publish, not immediately.

Starting marks the survey as running from that moment; there is no scheduled start. Publishing is what puts it on the page. The surveys running on a website are built into the script file Pertento serves to that website, and that file is rebuilt when the website is published rather than every time a setting changes. A website is published when an experiment on it is started, ended or deployed, when its traffic weights change, or when you use Enforce new Rules on a running experiment.

Until then the survey's Results tab will say it has not been shown to anyone yet.

Ending a survey

End stops the survey, and every response already collected is kept. Like starting, ending takes effect on the site at the next publish. Until then the widget can still appear, and answers given in that window are still saved: they are real answers, and refusing them would also mean asking those visitors again later.

An ended survey can be started again with Start again. New responses go into the same survey, and results are not split by run, so the Results tab reads both runs as one.

Editing a survey

You can change a survey's name, targeting, experiment link, trigger, position, accent colour and corners, widget texts, frequency limits and sentiment analysis at any time, whether it is a draft, running or ended. Changes reach the site at the next publish.

Once a survey has been started, its questions and its type are fixed, and they stay fixed after it ends. That includes the options, scale labels and placeholders. The responses already collected point to those questions, and changing them would mix answers to different questions in one result. The Questions step shows them read-only. If you want different questions, duplicate the survey and start the copy.

Only a draft can change type, for example from NPS to Custom. When an NPS, CSAT or CES draft becomes Custom, its score question keeps its scale.

Duplicating, archiving and deleting

• Duplicate: creates a draft called "(name) (copy)" with the same questions, targeting, texts, trigger, appearance, frequency limits, share of visitors and sentiment setting. The experiment link is copied if the experiment is still available. Responses are not copied. The copy opens straight in the builder.
• Archive: hides the survey from every view except Archived. It can be undone with Unarchive, and an archived survey is not served on the site after the next publish.
• Delete: removes the survey from the library. Responses already collected are kept so past results stay readable. A running survey cannot be deleted; end it first. There is no way to restore a deleted survey from the dashboard.

Who can do what

Members can see every survey and its results but cannot create, edit, start or end one. Admins and owners can do all of it. The library's Created by column shows who created each survey. Survey changes are not currently recorded in the activity log.

When the account has no active plan

Surveys stop serving along with experiments when an account has no active plan, or has chosen to keep its plan and used all of its sessions for the period. The account becomes read-only: results stay readable, but surveys cannot be created, edited, started or ended until a plan is active again. See Failed Payments and Read-Only Accounts.