Survey drafts
Use survey drafts to introduce a two-staged approach to survey management, where each survey has a draft version and a published version. Once a draft is published it is no longer possible to make changes directly to the survey. Instead, further changes are made to a draft and do not impact the current published survey. This creates a workflow where changes are not made to live production surveys, which reduces the risk of making unintended changes.
Optionally use the approver role, an additional but complementary feature to survey drafts, which adds an extra layer of validation before a draft is published. When the approver role is enabled, only users with the correct permissions level are able to publish surveys. Users without the correct permissions level are no longer able to publish drafts. This adds a governance layer for customers who need more control over which content is being published to production.
When the drafts surveys feature is enabled, the following changes are made to the property.
- The list view of surveys shows whether a survey is a draft or published.
- Trying to edit a published survey offers a choice to either view the survey, without being able to make changes, or edit a draft copy of the survey.
- The survey editor indicates the survey's status, and a published survey can then only be opened in a new "view only" mode. When a survey has a published and a draft version it is possible to toggle between the versions in order to compare changes. The toggle does not appear if there is not a draft and published version.
- To make fields reusable when using survey drafts, there must not be a published version of the survey.
When a survey has a draft and a preview, the Preview feature has a button to chose between previewing the different versions.
- Tip: Feedback submitted via a draft survey's Preview is sent to Experience Cloud with a new origin type value of DraftPreview. Admins should check and update their development cycle K-field logic to include this new value.
Enabling the draft surveys feature for a property results in wide ranging changes. If the property already contained surveys when this feature is enabled, all unpublished surveys are updated to draft status and any published surveys are set to published status. Upgrading to Survey Forms 2.0 alongside this feature also upgrades the published surveys.
In the event that the feature is turned off for the property, all draft surveys are set to unpublished and any published surveys remain published. In cases where there is a published version and a draft version at this time then the published version is retained.
Creating drafts
When the drafts feature is enabled, any new surveys are created as a draft and you can immediately make changes to it. If a survey has already been published, it cannot be directly modified and you choose whether to create a draft or not. You can edit this draft as usual and it can then be published instead of the current live survey. This applies to any changes to the published survey such as editing the survey components, modifying targeting rules, changing translations, and so on.
When you try to make changes to the published version you can:
- View the current configuration without making any changes.
- Create a new draft of the published survey. The content of this draft is initially identical to that of the published survey.
- When there is already a published version of the survey and an active draft you can choose to not keep the current draft and instead edit a new draft by selecting Discard from the form's context menu. You have to confirm the action, to protect against accidental data loss.
Publishing a Draft
Publishing a draft makes the survey available to the website where Digital is deployed. The publish action has been moved to the context menu. If the survey has not been published before, this is one step operation. If there is already a published version, the following dialog is shown:
- Text: "Publishing this draft will discard the currently published survey version, are you sure?"
- Buttons: "Yes", "No".
- Yes- Discard the previous version and publish the draft
- No - Close the modal and do nothing
When publishing a draft, its status is updated to published and is reflected in the surveys list. Once a survey is published, it is not possible to directly make any changes to the survey.
If the approver role has been enabled you can download a spreadsheet that shows the differences between the draft and published versions. This capability is available only when there is a draft and a published version of the survey. To download the comparison spreadsheet click Export from the survey's context menu.
Updated Survey list
With survey drafts enabled, additional information is available in the list view. The updated list survey view shows:
- Modified shows the date of the last modification to the survey. This includes the date of the latest save of a draft.
- Status can be one of Published or Draft. If the survey is published and has a draft version, a red indicator is displayed next to the Status. Similarly, the hover tooltip shows This form has a draft.
- If there is a published and draft version of the survey with different trigger types, the survey list displays the trigger type of the published version.
Context menu changes
The draft surveys feature changes the survey context menu, and some of the changes depend on factors such as whether the survey is a draft or published survey, your user's role, and so on. When you click on the three dot button, the following differences are available:
- Discard Draft is shown when the survey you opened the context menu on has a draft. This permanently deletes the draft version only.
- Remove is shown when the survey has both a draft and published version. This permanently deletes both the published and draft versions.
- Preview opens the preview modal. If the survey has a published version, the default view is the published version.
- Lock or Unlock are only available when there is a draft of a survey.
- Duplicate when there is an active draft and a published version you chose which version to duplicate. The duplicated survey is a draft regardless of whether you duplicate the published version or a draft.
- Unpublish is only displayed when the survey has a published version. Once you unpublish survey, it automatically becomes a draft. If there is also a draft version of the survey you are trying to unpublish, choose whether to keep the draft or the published version.
Additionally, if the approver role is enabled then the user's role controls whether the Publish and Unpublish option are available.
