When you create a campaign, you’ll be prompted to either select an existing questionnaire or create a new one. If you already know how to create a call operation and how to create a door-to-door, or canvassing operation, you’re definitely ready to learn how to create a new template!
Here, we’ll create our questionnaire as part of a call operation; however, the same processes apply to survey destined to door-to-door, although the contents can be different.
1. There are two ways to get to creating and editing surveys. First, once your operation is open and the initial details are entered, you'll eventually get to the step where you have to select your survey. There, you can "Create a new template", or select an existing one.
2. You can also find your survey in "Operations", the "Operation template". There, you'll see the ones you already have (here, none), and click "Create form template" to start a new one.
3. No matter how you get there, when you click on "Create form template", a window will open or the page will change to one where you can create your form. You can add different types of sections, detailed below.
Email, so your agents can ask the caller for their email address.
Survey, so your agents can ask your very important survey questions and ensure that the answers are correctly entered.
Phone, to enter one or more phone numbers.
Tags, so your callers can add tags to the voter.
Comment, to allow callers to add comments.
URL, if you want to let your callers open another website, for example, your party’s membership page.
Donations, to include a donation form, if it is legally permissible for your callers to do so.
Consent question, a step that can be placed first to ask the person if they agree to take a survey, for example. This first question could either end the call (if the person says NO) or lead to a follow-up question (if they say YES). We’ll see later how to set up these different options!
Finally, the “Read Aloud” field allows you to add text that the agent must read aloud, without ending with a question. It could be the introduction you want them to read; with variables, it could be "Hi! I'm a volunteer for (candidate), am I speaking to ((Full name))?".
4. To add fields to your questionnaire, drag them from the left column—where you see your options—to the right column, where you can arrange them in any order you like. Here, we’ve dragged a “Survey” field, which is likely the most important one for our canvassing operation. Once dragged, you’ll need to configure the added field by clicking the settings button.
5. Here, you’ll need to choose the appropriate survey, then the question you'll be asking. This does not correspond to what the agent will see or ask, but rather to the data that will be entered into this voter's record. For example, with "Pointage" and "1st choice", as chosen here, the answer selected by the agent will correspond to the voting intention of this voter.
The question you enter for your agent should therefore reflect this!
* On the right side of the window, you’ll see a preview of what the section will look like to an agent. At the top, you’ll see your name where the voter’s name would appear, followed by a preview of the section.
6. When setting up a survey question, you should write the question exactly as you want the agent to ask your voter. You can add variables (here, the full name of the voter on file).
Directly after the question, you’ll see the possible response options—the same ones used throughout your database—that will be offered to the callers (typically, the political parties involved, as well as standard codes: Opponent, Undecided, etc.). Verify that you have all the responses you want to offer to the callers.
7. Before saving the configuration, there is one last option: you can click on “Add another option.” Here, you can create different branches, the agent is routed to different sections of the survey based on the answers entered in the app.
For example, here we specify that if the person contacted is identified as an “Opponent” ("Adv"), the agent's interface should skip directly to the end (because we selected “Go to the end”), bypassing other sections, such as those asking for an email address. With this option, you can create a branching structure in your questionnaire as complex as you can imagine!
For example, you might want "Opponents" or "Undecided" to be asked for their second choice (thus moving to a second “Survey” section that asks for it), while supporters move to the "Tag" section and are asked if they want to volunteer for the campaign (which will result in the addition of the “Volunteer” tag, or not..).
If you add one option too many or want to remove it, you can always do so by clicking “Remove option.”
8. You’ll need to configure each added section before you can save your entire survey, be it Email, Phone, tags, etc. Once that’s done, you can click “Finish Config”.
9. Give your survey a title and description.
Once you click "Create the template", your work here is done!
