Create a survey

By the end of this page you have an empty survey called “Safe crossings”, its map centred on the street you care about, and a first section ready for questions.

Sign in and open the dashboard

1. Go to mapsurvey.org and sign in. If you have no account yet, sign up with your email address; the free tier has no limit on surveys or responses.
2. After signing in you land on the Dashboard, which lists your surveys. On a brand-new account Mapsurvey skips the empty dashboard and opens the create page for you; the Skip to dashboard → link takes you back if you want to look around first.

Create the survey

1. Click New Survey.
2. Under Survey name, type Safe crossings. The name is shown to respondents, so keep it short and plain.
3. Under Available languages, leave the default for now. You can add languages later; see Translate a survey.
4. Ignore the Let AI draft it panel for this tutorial. It generates sections and questions from a written brief, which is useful once you know what a good survey looks like.
5. Click Create empty (on a phone the same action reads Skip and start from scratch).
6. On the Where? step, drag and zoom the map until the pin sits on the street, or type its name into the search box. Pick a base map from the control in the top-right corner. This framing is exactly what respondents see when they open the survey. Click Create survey.

You can change the framing at any time from Survey settings.

Find your way around the editor

The editor has three columns:

• Left: the list of sections. A section is one page of the survey. Every new survey starts with one section; New Section adds more, and you reorder them by dragging.
• Centre: the selected section’s settings and its questions. New Question opens the question dialog.
• Right: the Live preview, which renders the section exactly as respondents will see it and refreshes after every change.

Changes save as you type; the editor shows All changes saved when it is done. There is no save button for the survey as a whole.

Set up the first section

1. In the centre panel, give the section a Title, for example Crossings on Main Street, and a short Subheading that tells respondents what to do.
2. Leave Layout on Map. The Form layout is a classic full-width page with no map, used for welcome text or demographics; map questions cannot live there.
3. Click Map Position. In the picker, drag and zoom until the view shows the street at a scale where individual crossings are visible, or search for the place. Leave Inherit position (don’t override) ticked if the survey-wide framing already fits. Close the picker; the preview updates.
4. If this section needs a different base map from the rest of the survey, pick one under Override basemap in the same picker.

Check the survey-wide settings

Open Survey settings from the editor. Three things are worth checking now:

• Default Map Position and the base map list (Base maps, Default base map) set what every section inherits.
• Visibility controls whether the survey is listed in Mapsurvey’s public gallery. It does not control who can open the link; a Private survey still opens for anyone who has its address once it is published. See Sharing and access.
• After the last page decides whether respondents see the built-in thank-you page or are sent to a web address of yours.

The full list is in Survey settings.

Next

Add a map question — the question that collects the pins.