Responses

Every answer a form receives lands in one place: the form's Records tab. Whether the response came from a colleague in the office, a field worker on a phone or a stranger following a public link, it appears in the same list.

The Records tab

The tab lists one row per response: the person's name and gender, how the response arrived, when it was submitted, whether it is lynked to a record in your register, its state and an Actions menu. Above the list, a chip for each state shows how many responses are in it, and choosing a chip narrows the list to that state.

Below it a second table lists the people who were enrolled but have not answered yet, with their Name, Phone and Actions, so chasing the gap does not mean comparing two lists by hand.

Above both tables the page counts the work for you: how many people are enrolled, how many have responded, how many are still pending, and the completion rate that follows from those.

The states a response can be in

Only responses that were submitted and have not been set aside are counted, in every figure the platform shows and in the exports. The states are:

• Draft: started and not yet submitted.
• Incomplete: it reached the server missing a required answer, and its collector can finish it.
• Needs resolution: it reached the server, but a rule its collector cannot change held it back, for example someone had already answered for that person on a form that takes one response each. It is kept, and someone who may resolve held responses decides whether it is accepted or set aside.
• Awaiting review: submitted and counted, and no reviewer has approved it yet.
• Approved: submitted, counted and signed off.
• Set aside: kept and not counted.
• Returned to data collector: sent back to the person who collected it.

A response started while the form was still a draft is a test response. It carries a Test badge, counts nowhere, and is discarded when the form is published.

One response in full

Open a response and you see it laid out the way the form is: each section under its heading, notes shown as notes, and each entry of a repeating section numbered in its place. An answer to a question that has since been removed from the form is kept and shown at the end, marked as retired. Where the form is scored, the computed figures are shown with it, and where the form is a post test, the comparison with that person's pre test is shown too.

Reviewing and approving

Checking responses is a different job from collecting them, and it is a different permission: Form Data Review. Somebody who can fill forms in does not automatically get to sign them off.

A reviewer can do two things with a single response:

• Approve the response, which records who approved it and when.
• Flag it with a note that points at the particular question that looks wrong, so the person who follows it up knows where to look.

To approve several at once, tick them on the Records tab and choose Approve from the actions. The next page lists every response you ticked and says, for each one, whether it will change and, if not, why not. Nothing changes until you confirm, and then every listed change is made or none is. Approving more than one at a time must also be allowed in the form's settings.

Setting aside, and what cannot be changed

An answer that has been submitted cannot be edited. Reviewing changes the review status and adds notes beside the response; it never rewrites what the person actually answered.

A real response is never deleted. When one should not count, for example a duplicate or an interview that went wrong, set it aside. It stays on the Records tab under Set aside, leaves every count and every export unless you ask for it, and remembers the state it was in, so Restore puts it back exactly there. Setting aside and restoring are open to whoever may resolve held responses on the form, and to the form's creator.

Only test responses can be deleted. Deleting a whole form still deletes its questions and all of its responses together, so treat that button with the care it implies.

Duplicate answers

Whether a second response from the same person is accepted depends on the duplicate policy set on the form: allow, warn or block. For a response filled in by staff the check is against that individual's earlier completed responses, which is the reliable case. For an anonymous visitor on a public link, the only thing available to compare is their browser session.

Your workspace activity log records the shape of what happened without recording what was said. Submitting, approving, flagging, setting aside and restoring a response, and deleting a form, are all written to it. The submission entry deliberately notes only the kind of respondent and how the form was filled in, never the answers and never the respondent's name.