A Word On Publishing And Survey Versions

SurveyEngine automatically maintains a single working version – the one you edit, and potentially multiple live versions – which respondents see.

The working version is only seen by you and possibly clients who you share the preview link with. Data is not recorded permanently and any edits to the working version have no effect on any live survey.

Once a working version is published, it becomes available to respondents. It also cannot be edited again. Any respondents in the middle of a previously live survey will continue on with that version, all new respondents will see the most recently published version. This is a critical requirement for data integrity.

Should changes to a live survey be required, the process is to make changes to the working editable survey and re-publish. This way each major change to the survey is a versioned snapshot.

When you publish, you have the option of 'clearing' existing data or retaining it. In fact no data is ever deleted and you have the freedom to re-include data from versions you previously excluded via the 'history' screen.

When data is extracted, data all versions that are active will be merged into the data structure of the current live survey.