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Choose how to start a survey

You end up knowing what each card on the How do you want to start? page does, how to skip the page once you have a favourite, and why a new survey’s map opens where it does.

Before you start

Section titled “Before you start”
  • You need the editor role or higher in the workspace; viewers do not see New Survey.

Steps

Section titled “Steps”

  1. Click New Survey on the dashboard. On a workspace with no surveys yet, Mapsurvey opens this page by itself.

  2. Click a card. One click is enough; there is nothing to confirm:

    • Start from scratch creates an empty survey and opens the editor. The survey is called Untitled survey (rename it in the editor header) and runs in your interface language.
    • Survey wizard (marked Best to start) takes you to the brief: describe what you want to find out in one sentence and the Wizard drafts sections, questions and translations for you to edit. The Wizard is an AI agent: your description goes to an AI provider to build the draft; survey answers never do. Start another way on that page brings you back here.

    To build from the assistant you already use — Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini, Le Chat, Perplexity, Cursor, VS Code and others — click MCP in the sidebar (or Connect your AI agent in the ? menu). Pick your assistant’s tile: Claude, Cursor and VS Code take one button, the others a few steps, and the page notices by itself when you are connected. Then write what you want to find out and open the prompt in your assistant; the survey appears on your dashboard. Step-by-step: Use the MCP server.

  3. To skip this page in future, open the account menu, click Preferences, choose your usual way under When I click New Survey and click Save. New Survey then goes straight to that path. Choose Ask every time to get this page back.

  4. To see the page once without changing your default, open the ⋯ menu on the dashboard and click Start another way…. The page names your current default with a link to Preferences.

Start from a copy of another survey

Section titled “Start from a copy of another survey”

To run a survey again — next year’s round, another district — open the ⋯ menu on its card on the dashboard and click Duplicate. The editor opens a new unpublished survey called “ (copy)” in the same workspace, with the same sections, questions, groups, visibility rules, translations, settings and map layers (with their objects and pictures). Responses, versions, campaign links, collaborators, comments and the public results page stay with the original, which does not change. Duplicate needs the editor role in the workspace.

Where the map opens

Section titled “Where the map opens”

A new survey’s map starts as close to you as Mapsurvey can tell without asking anything you have not agreed to, in this order:

Source When it applies
Your location Your browser has allowed Mapsurvey to use it. Start from scratch asks on the click when it has not asked before; the create page offers Use my location under the map instead of asking on load.
Your workspace’s last survey The newest survey in the workspace that has a map position.
Your country Read from the connection; a country-wide view at a low zoom.
The world Nothing better is known.

Whatever the start, you frame the map yourself afterwards: on the create page before generating a draft, or in the editor under Map Position and Survey settings.

Result

Section titled “Result”

New Survey either asks how you want to start or, once you set a default, opens your preferred path directly, and the map of a new survey opens near you rather than on a fixed city.

Section titled “Related”

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