Surveys

When you first click on the "Surveys" button in the right-hand side menu you will see a list of all your surveys, including those surveys that are owned by other users but which you have been granted access to (if any). By default, your surveys will be sorted by the date that they were last modified with the most recently modified surveys appearing first. You can change the way that the surveys are sorted by clicking on the Sort By input and changing it to Name. You can also search for surveys by name using the search input towards the top right of the screen.

Creating a Survey

To create a survey, click on the "New Survey" button towards the top right of the screen. A dialogue will open with a single input - the name of the survey. Enter a name for your survey and then click on "Create". The name that you choose for your survey will help you distinguish it from other relationship-based surveys that you may be running at the same time, i.e. the respondents to the survey will not see the name you select.

Survey Details

After you create your survey, you will be directed to a screen that takes you through the steps required to create a survey. These steps are listed on the left of the screen and the first is called Survey Details. Survey Details allows you to set the status of your survey. You will find that it is Collecting by default but you can change this to Offline or Completed at any stage. If the status of the survey is either Offline or Completed then respondents will not be able to submit responses for the survey. Generally you will change the status of your survey to Completed once you are ready to close the survey and begin the analysis.

You will also see an input for the name fo the survey here. This is the same name that you set for the survey when creating the survey. This input gives you the ability to edit the name at a later date if needed.

And, finally, you will see that there is the ability to upload an optional image for the survey. If you upload an image here then the card for that survey will use that image (i.e. in the view that lists all of your surveys as cards).

Welcome Message

The welcome message is the first screen that a respondent to your survey will see once they click on their unique link to take the survey. You will find that a default welcome message is provided. You may edit this message as needed. Rich text is supported so you can add bold, italics, links, images, etc. to the welcome message. By default there is a message that contains the respondent's full name in bold. Both {firstName} and {fullName} can be used in this message and will be replaced with the respondent's first name and full name from the respondent list.

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Mentioning the respondent by name in this message is a good idea as it helps prevent the issue of respondents forwarding their email with their unique link to others who may then take their survey if they haven't already submitted their response.

Adding Questions to Your Survey

The third step in creating a survey is to add or edit questions. Here we will focus on that step.

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It is of course possible to edit your survey at a later stage by clicking on your survey in the list view which will see you return to these steps. You will then be able to edit your survey questions, respondent list and email launch communication. Indeed, it is even possible to edit questions and the respondent list after a survey is live and collecting responses. Typically though you will want to minimize any edits to a survey after launch.

To add a question to your survey, click on the "New Question" button and a dialogue will appear with all the necessary inputs for adding a question to your survey. The first input that you will see is the type of the question - there are six different question types available: textbox, numeric, numeric slider, multiple choice, matrix selection and search and select. We examine each of these question types in a fair bit of detail below. You will also see that there are options to add either a page break or descriptive text next to the new question button.

Relationship Questions vs Non-Relationship Questions

One of the inputs you will see in the dialogue for creating questions is "Relationship Question" which is toggled on by default. Before looking at the various types of questions available it is important to understand that each question in a Polinode relationship-based survey can be either a relationship question or a non-relationship question. A relationship question is used to collect data about relationships that the respondents have and will produce a network diagram that can then be analyzed within Polinode. A non-relationship question on the other hand is very similar to a regular survey question and the answers to a non-relationship question will be available as attributes on the respondents in the network. For example, I can ask respondents a relationship question such as "Who do you go to for advice?" and I will then be able to generate a network showing those relationships which I can then interactively explore and analyze. I may also ask respondents a non-relationship question such as "What is your gender?" and the answers to that question will be available as attributes on each node (i.e. respondent) in the network. I can then size by, color by, filter by this attribute as I can by any attribute in a network.

If the Relationship Question toggle is set to true (as it is by default) then another input will be visible that will ask you to specify a Source of Relationships for the relationship question. You have three options:

Respondent List: This is the default option and is what you will use to ask respondents about their relationship with all other respondents in the survey.
Supplementary List: A Supplementary List works in a similar fashion to a Respondent List except that it is more general. It can be used to ask respondents about a subset or superset of people relative to the respondents themselves, for example asking a division about a whole company. A Supplementary List can also be used to ask about abstract items that do not need to be people or to overlap with the respondent list. For example, we can ask respondents to select a number of values from a set of values.
Answer to Earlier Relationship Question: This third option for the source of relationships allows us to pipe the answers from one relationship question into a subsequent relationship question. We can even chain this together multiple times or pipe from one question into multiple subsequent questions.

Textbox

The first question type available in the list of possible question types is textbox. A textbox question allows you to collect open text data, i.e. where the respondent is provided with a box within which they may write a free-form text response.

The first input for the question after selecting the type of question is the actual text of the question. Please note that rich text is supported for inputting question text so you can add images, bold text, links, etc. here if desired.

You will see that the option is available for this question to be either a relationship question or non-relationship question. If you leave Relationship Question toggled on then a small text box will be available for every item in the source of relationships. For example, the name of every respondent in the survey will appear with a small text box next to them if the source of relationships is set to be the respondent list. If you select no for relationship question then a single textbox will be presented to the respondent.

Each question in the survey can either be optional or required. By default all questions are optional such that a respondent does not need to enter an answer to the question but if you would like to make a question required you can do so by toggling the input for Required to true.

For textbox questions there is also an input called Short Text Input. By default the input for a textbox question will be a paragraph style input but if you toggle this input to its active state then the input will be single line instead designed for the respondent to input just a few words.

All question types also have an input called Question Abbreviation. Question abbreviations are optional and, if provided for a relationship question, will be used as part of the name of the generated networks. If provided for a non-relationship question then the abbreviation will be used as the name of the attributes for the nodes (e.g. "Gender" for a question that asks about gender).

Once you have finished creating your question you can click the Finish button and it will be added to your survey. You can then preview that question in your survey at any time by clicking the Preview button that is present towards the top right of the screen when you are in the Questions step of creating a survey.

Numerical

Numerical questions are very similar to textbox questions with the main difference being that numerical questions take numbers as inputs instead of text. So, for relationship questions a numerical question will show a numerical input next to each item in the source of relationships and for non-relationship questions there will just be a single numerical input.

Numerical Slider

Numerical slider questions are similar to Numerical questions in the sense that both are designed to collect numbers as responses. Numerical sliders though present the respondent with a slider that has a lower and upper bound and which the respondent then slides a thumb up and down to indicate their response. There are a number of additional inputs for a numerical slider:

Minimum Value: The lowest value in the range for the slider (defaults to 0)
Maximum Value: The highest value in the range for the slider (defaults to 100)
Default Value: The value that the slider will start at (defaults to 50)
Minimum Label: The text label that will appear above the minimum value (defaults to "Minimum")
Maximum Label: The text label that will appear above the maximum value (defaults to "Maximum")
Increment: The step value that the slider will move up and down (defaults to 1)

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Both numerical and numerical slider questions can be used to efficiently collect information about the strength of relationships in a relationship-based survey. For example, you can pipe responses from a name generator type question into a numerical slider question where you would ask the respondent to indicate the frequency or importance of a relationship including how important greater access to the nominated individuals is. Once the networks are generated, the responses to this question will be available as weights on each edge which you can use in the analysis of the network by for example calculating weighted In Degree.

Multiple Choice

Multiple choice questions present the respondent with a number of selected options to choose from. The inputs for this question that have not already been covered above for other question types are:

Additional Names: If this is a relationship question and this option is enabled then respondents will be able to add additional names to the list (either the respondent list or supplementary list, depending on what is selected for the question). This is often called snowball survey functionality and is best used when you are collecting data on an unbounded or unknown network. If you are running a more straightforward relationship-based survey such as one where the employee list is known then it's generally better to not toggle this option on as it can create messy data if respondents misspell names.
Multiple Selection: This input will determine whether the respondent can only select one option from the list of provided options or if they can select mutiple options (i.e. is it a radio button multiple choice quesiton or a checkbox multiple choice question). If Multiple Selections is set to true then you will see that you have the ability to specify a maximum and minimum number of selections for the quesiton as separate inputs.
Answers: For non-relationship questions (so only visible when Relationship Question is set to false), you can edit, delete and add selection options here.

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Both multiple choice and matrix choice questions will be ordered alphabetically. So, if you use these question types for relationship questions one possibility is to add the name of a location or division before the name of the individuals. The individuals will then be sorted by that location or division. For example, "New York - John Citizen", "London - Jane Citizen", etc.

Matrix of Choices

The matrix question type allows you to specify a number of column headings and the respondent will then select one or more options for each row. If you would like the respondent to only select one option for each row then you should leave Multiple Selections untoggled, otherwise toggle it on to true. For non-relationship questions you have the ability to manually add row headings. For relationship questions though the row headings will come from the source of relationships that you select.

Search And Select

The search and select question type is mostly used for relationship questions where there are a large number of potential names / items for the respondent to select from. If there are more than ~200 items in the list then a multiple choice question becomes infeasible and it is generally better to use the Search and Select question which scales up to 10's of thousands of items in the list. For search and select questions, the respondent will start typing a name and the best matches will be presented to them to select from.

Search and select questions can be non-relationship questions too in which case you will see a list of options that you can edit and add to but most often the items to select from will come from the source of relationships selected. Just as for multiple choice questions, you will find that you have the ability to enforce a minimum and maximum number of selections and can also specify whether the respondent should be able to add Additional Names to the list or not.

When creating a search and select question you will see an option called scroll which is off by default. If you turn the scroll option on the interface for the search and select question will include the ability for respondents to scroll through all of the names in the list for the question as well as search by name.

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Adding additional names to a Respondent List will use a respondent credit each time an additional name is added by a respondent. However, if you use a Supplementary List rather than a Respondent List (which can have the same names as the Respondent List) then no respondent credits will be used when additional names are added. You can then choose at a later date which new names to add to the respondent list and which ones not to add.

Descriptive Text

Descriptive text can be added at any point in the survey. It allows you to write text where no input is required by the respondent. You can use it for introductory text or to create headings in the survey.

Page Break

It's possible to divide your survey up into multiple pages. Simply insert a Page Break where you would like a new page to begin.

Moving and Editing Questions

Once you have added your first question you will see that there are four buttons towards the bottom of the question you have just added:

Move: Click this button to rearrange the order of your questions. You can drop the question above or below another question to reorder the questions.
Edit: Click this button to edit the text and/or settings for the question.
Duplicate: Clone the question by clicking here. An identical question will immediately be added below the question you have just duplicated.
Delete: Delete the question by clicking here. You will be asked for confirmation before deleting a question.

NOTE

Deleting a question for a survey that has had responses submitted will see the responses for that question deleted immediately.

Completion Message

The completion message is the message that respondents will see after they have clicked submit at the end of the survey and you can customize the text for that message in this input as well. Both {firstName} and {fullName} are also supported here. Both {firstName} and {fullName} can be used in this message and will be replaced with the respondent's first name and full name from the respondent list.

There are two relatively advanced options available on this Completion Message page:

Redirect on Completion: This allows you to specify a URL that you would like the respondents to be automatically redirected to on submitting a response.
Webhook on Completion: This allows you to specify a URL that Polinode will send data to each time a respondent submits a response. This will let you know which respondent has submitted a response and allow you to use our API to retrieve that response to, for example, create an immediate customized report for that respondent. Note that this option is only available to Organizational accounts.

Lists

The next step in the survey creation / management steps is Lists. It is here you can upload and edit both your Respondent List and (optionally) Supplementary Lists for the survey.

Respondent List

Once on the lists page you will see the heading Respondent List towards the top of the page and two buttons underneath it - Download List and Update List. When uploading a new list or updating an existing list the first thing you will want to do is download the existing list. To do so, just click on the Download List button and you will find an Excel file with the following columns:

Name: This should be the full name of your respondents such as John Citizen. You should enter this name as the first name followed by the last name without any commas in between. All the names in your relationship-based survey need to be unique. If there are multiple people in your respondent list with the same name you should add some kind of identifying information to the name such as Location, Division or Email in brackets after their name. Many HRIS systems provide both formal and preferred names - generally you should use the preferred names of respondents rather than their formal legal names. Typically we would recommend including the email of respondents in brackets after their name so that it is easy to lookup individuals by email as well as name (and to guarantee uniqueness). So, typically the names in this name column look like John Citizen (john.citizen@example.com).
Email: Enter the emails of all of your respondents here. If you plan on using some of Polinode's more advanced functionality for distribution, i.e. other than email, you can enter dummy emails here in the form of "example.email+1@polinode.com", "example.email+2@polinode.com", etc. All emails need to be unique. Polinode will not try to send emails to any email that contains "example.email" in it.
firstName: Optionally you can enter the first name of respondents in this column. The first name of respondents is available when sending out emails to respondents and also on the splash page that greets respondents when they first click their unique link. If you don't include a firstName column in your respondent list then that part of the Name column before the first space will be used as the first name of the respondent. The firstName column does not have to be unique and is not limited to a single word - you can enter multiple words or even non-unique full names for respondents, i.e. it can be used as a flexible variable that you have access to in both the email and splash page but is most often used to enter the first name of respondents.
Id: This is the unique id of the respondents. Polinode provides this data automatically and you can't edit it by changing the field in the Excel file. When adding new rows for new respondents you can leave this field blank.
Status: As your respondents progress through the survey their status will change automatically from Not Sent to Not Started to Started to Submitted. There are also a couple of other special statuses: Bounced, Starred and Opted Out. Most of the time you should let Polinode handle these statuses automatically for you but if you ever do need to edit the status of respondents in bulk you can do so by editing this field and re-uploading the list. When adding new rows for new respondents you can leave this field blank.
Unique Response URL: We provide the unique response URL for each respondent in case you would like to run your own mail merge or distribute these unique response URLs yourself (i.e. outside of the Polinode application). Polinode provides this data automatically and you can't edit it by changing the field in the Excel file. When adding new rows for new respondents you can leave this field blank.
Started Time (UTC): This contains the time that the respondent started the survey. Polinode provides this data automatically and you can't edit it by changing the field in the Excel file. When adding new rows for new respondents you can leave this field blank.
Submitted Time (UTC): This contains the time that the respondent submitted the survey. Polinode provides this data automatically and you can't edit it by changing the field in the Excel file. When adding new rows for new respondents you can leave this field blank.
Time to Complete (Mins): The difference between the Started Time and the Submitted Time. You can use this field to understand how long it is taking respondents to complete your survey. Polinode provides this data automatically and you can't edit it by changing the field in the Excel file. When adding new rows for new respondents you can leave this field blank.
Last Emailed Time (UTC): The time that the last email was sent to the respondent. Polinode provides this data automatically and you can't edit it by changing the field in the Excel file. When adding new rows for new respondents you can leave this field blank.

Here is a more detailed summary of what the respondent statuses mean:

Not Sent: Indicates that no initial email communication has been sent to the respondent yet.
Not Started: Indicates that a respondent has received the initial email communication but has not yet started completing the survey. A respondent's status will automatically be changed to Not Started once the initial email is sent to them.
Started: Indicates that a respondent has started completing the survey but has not yet submitted their response. A respondent's status will automatically be changed to Started once they have started completing the survey.
Submitted: Indicates that a respondent has completed and submitted their response to the survey. A respondent's status will automatically be changed to Submitted once they click the Submit button on the final page of the survey. Once a respondent's status is Submitted they will not be able to access their response in order to change it for privacy reasons. However, you can manually change their response to Started to reopen it if so desired.
Starred: A special status that you may use to select a single respondent or group of respondents in order to email them. Once an email has been sent to respondents with a Starred status their status will automatically return to what it was previously unless it has been updated in the interim.
Bounced: Changing the status of the response to Bounced indicates that an email communication to the respondent has bounced. A respondent's status will automatically be set as Bounced if an email to that respondent is recorded as having bounced. To fix bounced email addresses you may export the respondent list and edit the impacted email addresses before re-uploading the list. You should then navigate to Manage and Follow-up Emails. Select the respondents with Bounced status in order to resend them the intital email. Their status will then be automatically updated (and will revert to Bounced if the email bounces again).
Opted Out: Changing the status of the response to Opted Out indicates that a respondent no longer wishes to receive any communication about the survey. A respondent's status will automatically be changed to Opted Out if they report an email sent in connection to the survey as spam.

In a respondent list file you can include as many additional attributes for the respondent as you like. Typically these come from an HRIS system and include demographic data such as: function, team, location, tenure, level, gender, age and role. To include them you simply add them as additional columns to the right of the last column in the Respondent List.

To edit a respondent list, you simply click Download List, make the edits that you want to the file (e.g. removing rows, adding rows and/or editing the data in a row) and then click the Update List file to upload the new list. When you do this, Polinode will update an existing respondent if any of the Id, email or name in the file match that of an existing respondent. It will add a new respondent if there is no such match. And, if the uploaded list does not contain the id, email or name of an existing respondent for the survey then that respondent will be removed (and the response of that respondent will be removed at the same time). You will receive a warning message before any respondents are deleted and will need to confirm that deletion.

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When updating a respondent list always export the current list and make additions / deletions to it then re-upload the full list. You should not just upload the incremental or new respondents as that will delete all of the current respondents in the survey.

Whenever a respondent list is uploaded, respondent credits will be required if there are more than 10 respondents in the list. The respondent credits are used immediately on the upload of the list. If you add more respondents to a survey later, we will only debit respondent credits for the new respondents added to the list. For example, if you upload a list of 100 respondents that will immediately debit 100 respondent credits. If you then add an additional 20 respondents to the list so that it is 120 rows in size, that will debit an additional 20 respondent credits. Uploading lists with up to 10 respondents without requiring respondent credits is designed to allow you to test the functionality and also to test small surveys as well.

Whenever a respondent list is uploaded a number of checks will be performed and any errors reported back to you (for example if your names or emails are not unique or if there is some missing data).

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If you ever use up respondent credits accidentally please let us know via support@polinode.com. For example, you upload a list to a survey but then decide to delete that survey and start a new one. We can add those respondent credits back in a scenario like that.

Once your list has been uploaded, you will see the list of respondents avaiable under the Responses tab.

We also make available a template file (see the Download Template) file for respondent lists. Generally though it's best to always export the existing respondent list and start with that. This template file does illustrate the addition of attributes to the respondent list as it contains an Example Categorical Attribute column and an Exmaple Numerical Attribute column.

Supplementary Lists

The other type of list that you can upload in Polinode is a Supplementary List. Each survey can have multiple Supplementary Lists or it may have none at all. Basically, Supplementary Lists allow you to ask relationship questions about a set of items that is more general than just the Respondents to the survey. They may be used to ask relationship questions about a superset or subset of the respondents (for example asking a division about everyone in an organization or vice versa). Alternatively, they can be used to ask questions about items that aren't related to the respondents at all or aren't people, including abstract ideas such as values.

In order to upload a Supplementary List, navigate to the Lists tab. Then click New List. A Supplementary List file is similar to the Respondent List file but it is a bit simpler. The only required column is the Name column and you can then have as many additional attribute columns to the right of that Name column as you like. Email and firstName are not relevant for Supplementary Lists. Name should of course still be unique but can be the name of anything (i.e. is not limited to people). Any columns other Name will be interpreted as attributes. There is a template Supplementary List file that you can download and it illustrates this with two example attribute columns.

One important point about the relationship between Supplementary Lists and Respondent Lists is that if the Name is exactly the same (including case) across any lists in the same survey then the nodes will be synced up, i.e. treated as one node. For example, if I include John Citizen in the Respondent List and John Citizen in the Supplementary List and ask a question using the Supplementary List then the respondent John Citizen will be treated as the same node as the Supplementary List item John Citizen. They are effectively synced.

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When using a supplementary list that has the same names in it as the respondent list, it's important that the attributes across the two lists are the same and all attributes (i.e. columns) are included across both lists. This is because the supplementary list items are synced to the respondent list items when the name matches and changing the attributes for one will change the attributes for the other. So, if you upload a supplementary list after your respondent list with no attributes then those attributes will be removed from the respondent list items as well.

Supplementary lists can be updated in a very similar way to respondent lists. Simply export the list, make any required changes and then re-upload the list. There is also a delete button to remove any lists that are no longer required and there is an edit button that you can use to change the name of your list. When you first upload a list the name of that list will be the same as the name of the Excel file that you are uploading.

Uploading a supplementary list does not require any respondent credits, i.e. if you run a survey with 100 respondents and use two supplementary lists each with 200 items then only 100 respondent credits are required. There are some fairly generous limits on the length of supplementary lists and the number of attributes that you can upload for performance reasons. If you encounter a message that indicates you have exceeded these limits please get in touch with support.

It's also possible to directly upload supplementary lists after selecting the source of relationships as a supplementary list when in the questions tab. This is provided as a convenience so that you don't need to move between the Questions tab and the Lists tab when managing supplementary lists for questions.

Advanced Options For Collecting Responses

The next tab in the create / manage view for surveys is Advanced Options. This tab contains a series of Advanced Options designed to give you more control over the collection of responses. Most of the time you shouldn't need to use these advanced options but they are present to support some relatively advanced use cases.

You will see a toggle here that allows you to use a single link for the distribution of the survey. In most cases it is preferable to use the built-in mail merge functionality detailed above. However, sometimes respondents may not have email addresses or you may not have access to those email addresses. In these situations it's possible to use a single link. You can then distribute the single link to respondents and they can use that link to take the survey. Once the single link option is activated you will see a number of other options appear:

Respondent Limit: Each time a respondent uses the single link to take the survey that will use up a respondent credit. You can set a limit for the total number of respondents able to take the survey here.
Identification Required: If identification is required then respondents must enter their name and some other piece of identifying information before taking the survey. Usually this piece of identifying information is email but it could be something else like employee id. If sign up is not required then the respondents don't need to enter any identifying information. Effectively they will be anonymous. Given the nature of relationship-based surveys it's generally not desirable to allow respondents to be anonymous. If the identifying information is an email then respondents will be emailed the link to take the survey. If it is something other than email then they will be taken directly to their response after entering the matching information.
Identifying Information: This is the identifying information that will be used to validate respondents. By default it is email which is of course already included in each respondent list. You can enter another custom attribute though such as "employee ID" and then, provided that attribute is included in the respondent list, respondents will be asked for that identifying information before being granted access to their response.
Name Autocompletion: If true then at the single link screen the names of respondents will be autocompleted when a name is typed in and only the names of respondents that are in the respondent list will be allowed.
Permitted Domains: It's possible to limit the domains of email addresses that respondents can sign up with. For example, you could ensure that only respondents that enter an email address that contains "example.com" will be able to receive the survey via email and take it. This option will only display if Name Autocomletion is set to false.

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If you want to use email as the identifying but have respondents taken directly to their response rather than emailed their link then you should use something other than "email" as the identifying information. For example, you could use "your work email" as the identifying information and then include that attribute in the respondent list.

The Initial Email and Reminder Emails

Once you've uploaded your Respondent List and, optionally, any Supplementary Lists the next step in creating a survey is to set up the initial email that will be used to distribute the survey to all respondents. Ths can be done via the Emails tab. This same tab is also used to send reminder emails to respondents.

To send an initial email to respondents you will generally want to select all respondents with a Not Sent status. So you simply click on the Not Sent chip under Respondent Status to indicate that. To send reminder emails you generally want to select those people with either a Not Started status or a Started status so you would click on both of those chips under the Respondent Status heading. There is a summary at the top of the page that tells you how many respondents you have selected and what proportion of the total respondent population that represents.

By default the from name for the email will be your name but it can be changed in this field and you may use a different from name for every survey. You can also customize the text for the email subject line and the email body that respondents will receive.

Rich text is the default for the email so you can insert links, use bold, etc. You can also toggle the email type field from Rich Text to HTML in which case you can use your own custom HTML email template. There are three fields that will be automatically replaced (i.e. a mail merge will be processed) if they are present in either the subject or body of the email:

{firstName}: This text will be replaced with the first name of the respondent. If you included a firstName column in the respondent list that you uploaded then that value will be used here. If not, then the first word (i.e. before the first space) in the Name column of the respondent list will be used.
{fullName}: This text will be replaced with the Name column in the respondent list.
{url}: Every respondent has a unique url that, when clicked, will take them to their response. This text will be replaced with the respondents unique URL. The initial email must contain this url placeholder and you will see an error message if you attempt to send an initial email without it. Follow-up emails on the other hand do not necessarily need to contain this url placeholder.

Once you have customized the text of your email you can test it by clicking on the Send Test Email butto towards the bottom of the page. A dialogue will open and you can enter the email or emails (separate multiple emails with either a comma or semi-colon) to send the test email to. Those emails will receive an email with a test url link and where the respondent name is "Test Name".

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If you would like to send an email to an individual or a small set of individuals you can do this using the Starred status. Simply change status of the relevant respondents under Responses to Starred and then select the Starred status here. Once you have sent the email to these individuals their status will automatically revert to what it was prior to you changing it to Starred. Respondents can also be changed to the Starred status in bulk by editing the respondent list.

After reviewing the test email and making sure that you are happy with the content of the survey using the test link you can launch the survey by clicking the Email Selected button (this button will be disabled until you have selected at least one respondent using the status buttons). You will be asked for confirmation and when ready should click Send Email. All respondents will then receive an email with their unique URL. Emails will be sent at a maximum rate of 10 per second so it will, for example, take approximately 2 minutes to send emails to 1,000 respondents. The emails will be sent with the display name that you set as the from name but will actually originate from surveys-service@polinode.com. The Reply To address on those emails will be the email address of the survey owner.

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Before sending a survey out to an organization, it's best practice to have their IT department whitelist the surveys-service@polinode.com email address to prevent emails from that address being sent to spam folders.

Responses

Once you've launched your survey you will want to monitor the responses received and manage it. You can do this under the Responses tab. Towards the top of the page here you will find a dashboard which provides you with a summary of:

The total number of respondents in the survey
The total number of responses received (i.e. respondents who have clicked Submit and therefore have a status of Submitted)
The response rate (i.e. 1 divided by 2)
The total number of bounced email addresses

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To deal with bounced email addresses where the email address was incorrect export the respondent list and make the appropriate changes to email addresses then re-upload it. Next navigate to Emails for your survey. Click on Bounced to select all those respondents for whom the email previously bounced. When you are ready click Email Selected Respondents. The status of respondents will change to Not Started unless the email bounces again, in which case, it will change back to Bounced.

Under the dashboard you will find a paginated list of respondents which gives you the the ability to both view and enter individual responses for respondents. To view or edit a response simply click on the name of the respondent in that list. You can search for specific respondents using the search input and you can also filter by status and sort by name, submitted date or status.

Once a response has been submitted you will see that there is a time and date provided in the list of responses. This is teh submitted date that is also available in the respondent list export.

You can clear all responses with the Clear All Responses button towards the bottom right.

The status of each respondent is indicated in the list of responses. For details on each status please see Respondent List. By clicking on any individual status you can change the status of that response manually. For example, you can manually re-open a response by changing its status from Submitted to Started. The respondent will then be able to edit their response using the same link that they would have previously used. You can also manually change the response of any respondent to Opted Out.

Duplicating a Survey

We now return back to the list of surveys view and walk through the other functionality that is available there. So, if you return to that list view of all of your surveys you will notice that each card has a menu available when you click on the three dots. The first item in that menu is Duplicate.

If you would like to clone or duplicate a survey you can do so using this Duplicate menu item. Simply click Duplicate and enter a new name for the survey you are about to clone. All of your survey questions and supplementary lists will be duplicated. The respondent list will not be duplicated and the duplicated survey will start with the standard five default respondents as when you create a survey from scratch.

Manage Users

By default only the Owner of a survey has access to that survey. The Owner of a survey is the user who first created that survey. However, the Owner of a survey can grant permission to other users to access that survey. You do this by clicking on the Manage Users button. This will show you a summary of all of the users that currently have access to the survey. To add a user click the Add User button and a dialogue will appear where you enter the email address of the user that you want to add. Then click Check. Polinode will check whether that user already has a Polinode account and let you know whether they do or not. After you have entered the email of the user you will want to edit the permissions that you would like to grant them. You can grant a user either Edit or View permissions. With Edit permissions they can change the survey questions, upload lists, etc. With View permissions only they can just view the survey but cannot edit it.

The other thing that you will need to decide is whether the user you are adding will have permission to grant other users access to the survey themselves. And whether or not they will have the ability to remove the access of other users (or edit their permissions).

Once you have selected the appropriate permissions, click the Add User button and the user will receive an email informing them that they have been granted access to the survey.

This Manage Users drawer for a survey will only be visible to users that have the ability to add or edit users for the survey.

It's also possible to add and manage users for a particular survey in bulk by using the Upload Users button.

Generating Networks

Once a relationship-based survey is complete you will likely then want to generate the networks for the survey. To do this click on the Generate Networks button you will find in the menu for the survey. A dialogue will open which lets you select whether you would like to generate networks for all relationship questions with a single click (the first tab in the dialogue) or, alternatively, you can generate networks individually by using the second tab. Since each generated network will use a private network you may want to generate the networks individually to use less private networks than otherwise might be the case.

When you generate networks from a survey for the first time there is a connection created between the survey and the generated networks. This is helpful as it's possible to generate networks while a survey is still live (i.e. incomplete). If you then subsequently generate networks for that survey again then the data in the previously generated networks will be updated. That is to say that new networks won't be created but rather the underlying network will be updated, leaving any views previously created unchanged. This is also helpful if you want to edit some attributes in the respondent list. You can make the change to the respondent list and then simply regenerate the networks.

TIP

When you generate networks from a survey, those networks will automatically have the same permissions as the survey that they are generated from. For example, if a user has Edit access to the survey they will automatically have Edit access to all the networks generated from that survey.

Export to Excel

Of course you don't need to generate networks in order to access the raw data collected via your survey. You can simply click the Export To Excel menu item instead and an Excel spreadsheet containing all of the responses will be downloaded to your computer. The format of this export is a series of worksheets, the first of which will contain all attributes on your nodes (both those that you uploaded as well as those collected by non-relationship questions) and then a worksheet will be included for each relationship question in the survey and that worksheet will include all nominations for that question.

Archiving a Survey

You may find that you have a large number of surveys in your Polinode account after a while but only need to work on a subset of them at any one time. The ability to archive and unarchive surveys is designed to allow you to do this. Simply click this menu item to archive a survey. It will then no longer be displayed in the list of your surveys unless you switch the Show Archived toggle to true towards the top of the screen. If a survey is archived, this menu item will change to Unarchive and you can use it to unarchive your survey.

Deleting a Survey

The final item you will see when clicking the three dots is delete. This menu item is only active for the Owner of the survey. Once clicked, you will be asked for confirmation and then the survey will be permanently deleted.

Actions on Multiple Surveys

For convenience, some actions may be applied across multiple surveys at the same time. To achieve this, hover over one of your survey cards and you will see a checkbox appear towards the top left of the card. Select this checkbox to select that survey. You will then be able to select other checkboxes to add other surveys to the selection and you will see a dialogue appear towards the bottom of the screen. This dialogue gives you the ability to either Archive, Unarchive or Delete multiple surveys at the same time. We have previously been through Archive, Unarchive and Delete in the context of individual surveys and the same statements apply here.

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