> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.wenite.io/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.
# Creating a Survey
> A practical guide to building a survey in the Wenite platform.
## 1. Starting a new survey
You always create a survey within the context of a client. Navigate to the company, go to **Surveys** in the left-hand navigation panel, and click **New survey**. Creation happens through a wizard that guides you step by step through the setup.
At the start, you choose how to begin:
* **Start from scratch** — start from an empty survey and build everything yourself.
* **Start from template** — start from a pre-assembled structure from the Library. Some blocks will already be present, ready to adjust.
Do you often use the same setup for different clients? Create a template in the Library first. That way you reuse a full structure instead of starting from scratch every time.
## 2. Step "Details": the basic settings
In the first step, you set the general properties of the survey.
### Main info
| Field | Description |
| ------------------------------------------ | ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| **Name** | An internal name used to identify the survey. Not visible to respondents. |
| **# targeted respondents** | Only used to calculate the response rate — not a hard maximum. |
| **Respondent can go to previous question** | Determines whether the respondent is allowed to go back to a previous question. Defaults to Yes. |
| **Minimum groupsize** | Number of responses required before results are shown, to preserve anonymity. Also applies to filtered sociodemographic results. Defaults to 5. |
| **Target audience** | **Entire company** or **Specific group (e.g. department)** — determines whether the survey targets everyone or a filtered subgroup. |
| **Your company logo** / **Client logo** | Two independent toggles controlling whether your own (consultant) logo and/or the client's logo are shown on the survey. Both default to on. |
**Target audience** and **Minimum groupsize** trade off against each other. Use **Entire company** when you want results that roll up cleanly into the Company Dashboard for full-organization benchmarking; use **Specific group** for a pilot, a one-off department follow-up, or when the client only wants a single team surveyed. For **Minimum groupsize**, a lower number gives more granular breakdowns (e.g. down to a small team) but raises the risk that a "group" score is really just one or two identifiable people; a higher number protects anonymity better but hides results for smaller groups entirely. The default of 5 is a reasonable starting point for most clients — raise it for a very small or sensitive population.
### Languages
| Field | Description |
| ------------------------------ | ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| **Available survey languages** | Select all languages the survey should be available in. Wenite supports 18+ languages (including NL, FR, EN, DE, ES, RU). Each language version is managed separately. |
| **Default survey language** | Used for the browser-tab title and as a fallback whenever a translation is missing. Must be one of the selected languages. |
For a multilingual survey, the first block is automatically a language-selection menu for the respondent.
### Benchmarks
At survey-creation time, three benchmarks are available to enable (at least one is required):
| Benchmark | Description |
| -------------------------- | --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| **Standard WPS** (default) | Compares answers with the middle of the answer scale. A score above 0 means the score is better than neutral, below 0 that it's worse. |
| **Wenite benchmark** | Compares results with an external group. For Wenite modules, this is Belgian white-collar workers, balanced by age and gender. A score above 0 means the score is better than the benchmark, below 0 that it's worse. |
| **Company benchmark** | Compares a filtered group with the total group. A score above 0 means the group score is better than the total score, below 0 that it's worse. |
The **Trend** benchmark (comparing against a previous round) isn't selectable here — it only becomes available once a client has multiple survey rounds, in the company dashboard. See the [Company Analysis guide](/product/company-analysis).
You can enable more than one, so consider what story you'll need to tell with the results. **Standard WPS** is the safe always-on default — it needs no external data and works from round one. Add the **Wenite benchmark** when the client wants outside credibility ("how do we compare to other companies"), and the **Company benchmark** whenever you're planning to filter results by socio-demographic group — without it, a filtered group has nothing internal to be compared against.
### Placeholders
| Field | Description |
| --------------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| **Browser-tab title** | The text shown in the browser tab when a respondent opens the survey. Set per language, with a "Sync name to all titles" shortcut. |
| **Placeholders** | Dynamic text fields for recurring words (e.g. a link placeholder). Fill in per language. All required placeholders must be filled in before you can continue. |
Once a survey is active or closed, most fields in this step are locked. Move the survey back to draft first to edit them.
### Individual feedback (DIF)
This section only appears when you start from a template that already has an individual report linked to it — it's not part of a from-scratch survey's Details step. See the [Custom Reporting guide](/product/custom-reporting) for what an individual report contains.
| Field | Description |
| ----------------------------------------------------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ |
| **Enable individual feedback for this survey** | Turns DIF on or off for this round. Worth enabling when giving each respondent something back increases the odds they'll actually respond — e.g. a short personal takeaway in exchange for their time. |
| **Respondents can choose to keep their results private** | Off by default. Gives the respondent a choice about the privacy of their individual results — exact behavior to be confirmed. |
| **Redirect respondent to individual report after complete** | Shows the report in-browser immediately after completion, instead of only sending it by email afterward. |
## 3. Step "Questions": building the survey with blocks
In the second step, you assemble the content by combining blocks. Click **Select block** to open the side panel. The available blocks are grouped into four categories.
A new survey isn't always completely empty: if the client already has company-wide socio-demographic questions configured, those are added automatically, alongside the automatic language-selection block for multilingual surveys. Check the block list before assuming you're starting from a blank slate.
### 3.1 General blocks
* **Info block** — a text block with formattable content (e.g. a welcome message or instructions). The respondent can easily pass this.
* **Disclaimer block** — the respondent must actively agree before continuing. Ideal for privacy or consent text. There can only be one disclaimer block per survey.
### 3.2 Socio-demographic blocks
Socio-demographic blocks identify groups within your respondents (e.g. department, age). You have two options:
* **Preset socio-demographic questions** — choose from existing, predefined questions.
* **Custom socio-demographic questions** — create your own question with a caption, an optional subcaption, an optional dashboard label, and your own answer options. For each answer option, you can set a targeted number of respondents. Custom questions can be **open-answer** (free text) instead of fixed options — useful when the groups aren't known in advance (e.g. "which team are you on?" in a fast-growing org). Open-answer socio-demo responses can still be used as a dashboard filter.
Socio-demographic questions can be **survey-specific** or **company-wide**. Only company-wide questions are included in the Company Dashboard.
Want to track the same group across multiple surveys in the company dashboard? Use company-wide socio-demographic questions.
Company-wide socio-demographic questions stay in sync automatically: if you edit one at the company level, existing surveys that already use it pick up the change — you don't need to update each survey individually.
### 3.3 Module blocks
Module blocks pull existing content from the Library. You can search and filter, and read more information about each block before adding it. There are three levels:
* **Questions** — add individual questions from a module.
* **Modules** — add a full module (a group of questions around one theme).
* **KPIs** — add all modules of a KPI at once.
For Wenite-created modules and KPIs, you can opt for the **"most predictive question"** option: only the single most predictive question per module is then used. This shortens the survey drastically while retaining nearly the same amount of information.
When you add a KPI whose module is already in the survey, the platform detects the overlap and warns you about duplicate modules.
### 3.4 Custom question block
Custom question blocks are for ad-hoc, survey-specific questions that don't exist in the Library. See section 4 for the available question types.
Custom questions need to be added in all survey languages.
### Managing and reordering blocks
You can edit or delete each block. You manage the order by simply dragging blocks around.
Once routing logic has been configured, you can no longer reorder blocks by dragging. From that point on, you manage the order through the Routing tab.
## 4. Question types
For a custom question block, you choose the question type. Wenite supports the following types:
| Type | Description |
| -------------------------- | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| **Single** | One answer from a list (e.g. Likert, yes/no). You can add an "Other" option with free text, and make options exclusive. |
| **Multi** | Multiple answers from a list. Set the minimum and maximum number of selections (0 = unlimited), and optionally make options exclusive. |
| **Numeric** | A free number within a minimum and maximum, either as an input field or as a slider (configurable step size). |
| **Ranking** | The respondent drags options into order; you determine how many items need to be ranked. |
| **Quiz (single or multi)** | A question with a correct answer and points. For multi-quiz, enable "Multiple correct answers possible". |
| **Open** | A free text field with a minimum and maximum character count. Optionally with email validation and an AI summary of responses. |
Default to **Single** for anything you want to score and benchmark (it maps cleanly onto the 0–100 scale) — it's what most Library questions use. Reach for **Multi** or **Ranking** for exploratory, non-scored questions where you want to know *which things* matter to respondents rather than *how much*. **Open** questions are powerful but expensive to analyze at scale — use them sparingly and lean on the AI summary rather than asking many of them. **Numeric** suits concrete counts (e.g. years of tenure) more than attitudes. **Quiz** types are for knowledge checks, not sentiment — they don't feed the same 0–100 scoring model as the others.
### Common settings
For most question types, you can configure:
* **Heading** — an optional larger heading line shown above the question.
* **Question** — the question text itself (required in all languages), plus an optional **Extra info/instructions** line and a **Label for dashboarding** (a short label used on the dashboard).
* **Optional** — the respondent may skip the question.
* **N/A option** — a "not applicable" choice.
* **Score interpretation (Positive/Neutral/Negative)** — determines how the answer feeds into the 0–100 score. Defaults to Neutral; for negatively-framed items (e.g. burnout), set it to Negative so a higher raw answer still reads as a worse score.
## 5. Step "Routing": logic and branching
By default, a new survey follows a single path: all questions are visible to all respondents, with all answer options shown. Use the **Routing** subtab to refine this path with logic.
### 5.1 Limiting answer options
Click the checklist icon on a block to add conditional logic that hides or shows certain answer options, based on previous answers. You can add one or more filter rules. With multiple rules, choose whether all conditions must be met (**AND**) or only one (**OR**).
### 5.2 Routes and branching
Use the **Default route** button, or drag a line from the end of one block to the start of another, to create new routes. As with limiting answer options, you use answer rules to determine which route a respondent takes, depending on their answers.
A survey must have exactly one clear start point and one clear end point. If the routing is incomplete or incorrect, a warning appears and you won't be able to save the survey.
Only **single, multi, and numeric** questions are eligible as filter questions for logic. A filter question must also come before the block it's applied to (no loops).
Click **Save** in the top-right corner to save the full structure and logic.
## 6. Testing a survey
Before you distribute a survey, it's best to review it from the respondent's perspective. Open **Test** from the survey's action menu (**···**) — a test link opens automatically in a new tab.
Responses to a test survey do not appear in the results dashboard.
## 7. Editing a survey and managing its status
A survey goes through three statuses, which you change via the action menu (**···**):
| Status | Action |
| ------------------- | ------------------------------------------------------- |
| **Draft** | Editable via "Edit" in the action menu. |
| **Active → Draft** | Click "Move to draft" to make changes. |
| **Closed → Active** | Click "Reactivate" to start collecting responses again. |
## 8. Exporting the structure
Use **Export structure** in the action menu to have the platform generate an Excel overview of the full survey (question text, answer options, logic). Useful for sharing the structure with a client for approval.
## 9. Generating demo data
Want to show what a filled-in dashboard looks like? Click **Generate Data** in the action menu. Enter a number of respondents (up to 100) and a **seed** value (so the same generated data can be reproduced later if needed), and the platform fills the survey with fictitious answers.
A survey with generated data can no longer receive real responses. Use this only for demonstration or testing purposes.
## 10. Recommended workflow
1. **Start smart** — start from a template if a suitable one exists; otherwise start from scratch.
2. **Set the details first** — name, languages, default language, benchmarks, and placeholders. Fill in placeholders completely right away.
3. **Build the structure** — add an info or disclaimer block first, then the socio-demographic questions (company-wide where relevant), then the module and/or custom blocks.
4. **Add logic last** — lock in the block order first, since you can no longer drag blocks around once routing is configured.
5. **Test** the survey via the test link and check every path.
6. **Optional** — generate demo data to showcase the dashboard, but never on the survey you're actually going to send out.
7. **Activate** the survey and continue with distribution (see the [Distributing a Survey guide](/product/survey-distribution)).