Surveys

A survey asks a template's questions of the people you choose and gives you the answers as tallies, never person by person: a pulse check, feedback on an offsite, a quick poll. It comes with the People add-on. HR admins send surveys and read the results. Everyone else answers them under People → Surveys.

Surveys are always anonymous. To ask named people, such as a self-assessment, and keep what each person said in their People file, send a form instead. See Performance reviews and forms.

Sending one

Go to HR → Surveys and open the Send a survey tab, or /hr/surveys?tab=send.

1. Questions from: pick a template. Surveys use the same templates as forms, so build or duplicate one on the Templates tab of HR → Forms first.
2. Name it. This is what people see in their list.
3. Due is optional.
4. Send to: everyone, one group, or people you tick. Only active members receive it. Someone who joins later does not get it.
5. Results show from: how many answers it needs before its results show. Five unless you change it, and never fewer than three. Send it to fewer people than that and its results will never show.

Preview, beside Send survey, shows the survey as people will see it, anonymous notice and all. You can try answering it, but nothing you enter is saved and nothing is sent.

Sending fixes the template's questions: answers point at those exact questions. To ask something different next time, duplicate the template.

Answering one

When a survey is sent to you, you are told in the app and by email, with a link straight to it. A survey waiting for you is in your Inbox until you answer it.

Answers are submitted once, together, with Submit answers. What you type is kept in this browser until then, so a failed submit or a closed tab does not lose it. You cannot change your answers after submitting, and you cannot answer twice.

How anonymity works

An answer is stored without your name, and without the time you gave it. HR sees who has finished, so they know who still needs a nudge, but not which answers are whose.

Results are held back until both of these are true:

• The survey is closed. If results showed while answers were still arriving, comparing them before and after one person finished would reveal that person's answers.
• Enough people have answered — as many as the survey was sent needing: five unless HR chose otherwise, never fewer than three. With fewer, the answers say too much about who gave them. Surveys sent before this was a choice need three.

Written answers are listed in alphabetical order, never in the order they arrived.

This protects anonymity from everyone using Time Trakkr, HR admins and the assistant included. It does not protect against someone with direct access to the database. If a question really must never be traced, do not ask it in a workplace tool.

Results

Open a survey on the Sent tab to see:

• Ratings: the average, and how many gave each score.
• Choices: how many picked each option. On a Choose any question each person can pick several, so the counts can add up to more than the number who answered.
• Written answers: listed in full, without names.
• Who has answered, and who has not yet.

Download CSV gives one row per response. Print / PDF opens the results as a printable page; Download PDF there saves it as a PDF from your browser's print dialog. Both appear only once the results can be shown: an anonymous survey's printed copy is held back exactly as the page is. Close… stops further answers. Closing cannot be undone.

Questionnaires sent with names before surveys became anonymous-only are still listed, and still show each answer with its author.

With the assistant

The assistant can tell you what is waiting for you (my_forms). For HR admins it can list surveys and their progress, read results under the same rules as the page, and send a survey. It always shows you who it would go to first, and sends only once you agree. It will not send one with names on it; that is a form, sent in the app. It cannot answer a survey for you.

What it does not do yet

• Reminders are off unless an HR admin switches them on under Form reminders, or you give this survey its own when you send it.
• No editing a survey after sending, and no adding people to it later.