Set a survey period

You end up with a survey that respondents can answer only between two moments you chose: before the start they see a page that says when it opens, after the end they see the closed page, and the survey closes on its own.

Before you start

• You are the owner of the survey (the period is a Settings control).
• You know the time zone the dates are meant in. The Settings block names the zone it uses: the one in your browser the first time you set a period, kept afterwards so a colleague in another zone does not shift the times.

Steps

1. Open the survey and choose Settings in the sidebar.
2. In Survey period, fill Opens on, Closes on, or both. Leave a box empty for no limit.
3. The block saves by itself. The status chip at the top now reads Open · Opens 3 Nov, 09:00 or Open · Closes 1 Nov, 23:59.
4. Publish the survey as usual if it is not published yet. The period does nothing for a draft or a testing survey.

What respondents see

• Before the start: a page with the survey’s name and “It opens on 3 Nov 2026, 09:00 (Europe/Berlin)”. No answer is recorded, and search engines are told not to index the page.
• Between the two: the survey, as always.
• After the end: the closed page, from the first minute. Within five minutes the survey’s status changes to Closed too, and the change is recorded in the survey’s history like a manual close.

Reopening

Pressing Reopen after an automatic close clears the past closing time, so the survey stays open until you set a new one. If you closed the survey early by hand while the closing time was still ahead, that time is kept and the survey closes then.

Notes

• The end must be after the start, and a new end must be in the future.
• The period belongs to the live survey. Unpublished changes do not have one of their own, and publishing them does not change it.
• Duplicate and the backup file leave the period behind: a copy starts with none.
• Over the REST API and the MCP server the fields are opens_at, closes_at and schedule_timezone on the survey.