Publish and share

By the end of this page the survey is open for responses and you have a link, a QR code and an embed snippet to hand out.

The three statuses

A survey is always in one of these states, shown in the publishing widget at the top of the editor:

Status	Who can open the link	Typical use
Draft	Nobody. The public address answers “unavailable”.	Building the survey
Testing	Only people with your private test link	Trying it on a phone, sending it to colleagues
Published (Accepting responses)	Anyone with the link	Collecting responses

A fourth state, Closed, stops new responses while keeping everything you collected; Reopen brings the survey back.

Test it first

1. In the publishing widget, click Move to Testing.
2. Click Share test link and send the address to yourself and a colleague. The test link carries a token; the plain survey address stays closed until you publish.
3. Walk through the survey on a phone. Check that the map opens on the right street, that the Place point button is understandable, and that the popup questions make sense on a small screen.
4. Fix wording in the editor as you go. While the survey is in testing, every edit is allowed and reaches the test link at once.

Responses you collect through the test link are test responses. You decide what happens to them at the next step.

Publish

1. Click Publish — open for responses.
2. In the Publish Survey dialog, leave Delete all test responses (recommended) ticked so your own trial pins do not end up in the results.
3. If the survey has more than one language and some text is still untranslated, Mapsurvey warns you that those respondents will see the primary language. You can publish anyway or go back and fill the gaps.
4. Click Publish.

The widget now reads Accepting responses. As long as nobody has answered, Back to Draft is still available and undoes the publication. Once responses arrive, structural changes go through a separate draft; see Edit a published survey.

Share the link

1. Open the Share tab and choose Share link & tracking….
2. Under Survey link, click Copy link. This is the address to put in an email, a post or a newsletter. Anyone who has it can respond; no account is needed.
3. Click QR code to show a code you can put on a poster, a flyer or a slide. People scan it with their phone camera and the survey opens in the browser.

Two more options on the same page:

• Embed on your site gives you an iframe snippet for a page on your own website or on a site builder. The survey works inside the box and responses arrive here as usual. Details, including how to restrict which sites may embed it, are in Embed a survey.
• Track where responses come from makes a separate link per channel (newsletter, social media, printed poster). Each response that arrives through a tracking link is tagged with its source, and the Responses page compares channels.

What respondents see

Respondents open the link, pick a language if the survey has more than one, and go straight to the first section. They do not create an account or install anything. If a respondent closes the browser and returns on the same device, their answers so far are kept.

Everything a visitor can do with a link, including passwords and public listing, is set out in Sharing and access.

Next

Read responses and export — see the pins arrive and take them into GIS.