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Surveys — Workflow

Overview

The Surveys workflow covers the full lifecycle of an internal survey: creation, distribution to selected collaborators, answer collection, and response analysis. The workflow has no approval pipeline — once a survey is created it is immediately active and ready to send.

Note

For the standard catalog lifecycle pattern, see: Workflows & Pipelines

Roles involved

  • Administrator / HR — Creates, edits, sends, and analyzes surveys from the Survey Administration screen (/surveys).
  • Collaborator — Receives survey invitations by email and answers surveys from the My Surveys screen (/my-surveys).

Status lifecycle

The following statuses apply to surveys:

  • ACTV — Active. The survey is live, can be sent to collaborators, and appears in recipients' My Surveys view.
  • INAC — Inactive. The survey is hidden from My Surveys for any collaborators who have not yet answered.

Info

For system-wide status guidance, see: Status

Status diagram

stateDiagram-v2
    [*] --> ACTV : Created
    ACTV --> INAC : Deactivated
    INAC --> ACTV : Reactivated
    ACTV --> [*]

Workflow

Workflow steps

  1. Administrator creates the survey using the survey builder.
  2. Administrator sends the survey to selected collaborators — SARA sends email invitations.
  3. Collaborators answer the survey from their My Surveys screen.
  4. Administrator reviews aggregated responses (overall or by department).

Create the survey

The administrator navigates to + New Survey and uses the built-in survey builder (powered by SurveyJS) to define the survey's title, description, and questions.

Supported question types:

  • Text — free-form text answer
  • Checkbox — multiple choice, multiple selections allowed
  • Radio group — multiple choice, single selection
  • Dropdown — single selection from a list

The survey is saved immediately as ACTV. No additional publishing step is required.

Editing vs. reusing

A survey can be edited only while it has no submitted responses. Once at least one collaborator has answered, the survey becomes locked and the Reuse action replaces Edit. Reuse creates a new independent copy of the survey that can be freely modified without affecting the original responses.

Send the survey

The administrator opens the row action menu for an ACTV survey and clicks Send survey. A modal appears with:

  • A collaborator selector (searchable, multi-select, with Select All support)
  • An optional free-text message to include in the email

SARA sends each selected collaborator an email invitation containing the survey title, description, the administrator's message, and a direct link to answer the survey.

Note

A collaborator can be sent the same survey multiple times if needed. Each send creates a separate pending record.

Answer the survey

Collaborators receive the email and navigate to /my-surveys (or use the direct link in the email). Their pending surveys appear with an Answer button. Clicking opens the interactive survey form. Upon submission, their answers are recorded and the row changes from Answer to View.

Review responses

Administrators can review results at any time from the row action menu:

  • View responses — shows all submitted answers aggregated per question, plus a list of collaborators still pending.
  • View responses by department — same view filtered to one department; a popup prompts for the department selection and the results open in a new tab.

Notifications

When a survey is sent, each selected collaborator receives an email with:

  • Survey title and description
  • The administrator's optional personal message
  • A direct link to answer the survey

Note

For global notification behavior, see: Notifications & Alerts

Exceptions & operational notes

  • A collaborator who has already answered a survey will still see it in My Surveys but the button shows View instead of Answer — their response is read-only.
  • Deactivating a survey removes it from My Surveys for collaborators who have not yet answered. Collaborators who already answered retain the View access to their submission.
  • The survey builder does not support editing or deleting individual questions while preserving existing answers. To make changes after responses exist, use Reuse instead.

Permissions

Permissions

Access and actions are permission-driven. See: Permissions