Surveys is Ardoq’s module for crowdsourcing information from the broadest possible contributor base, and Ardoq Discover is our new application for democratizing that insight to the broadest possible audience. Integrating the two creates an enterprise architecture (EA) application with full read-write capabilities and mass consumer appeal.

As Ardoq admin, you keep complete control over who can update what and where based on your need to federate or centralize processes. So at one extreme, you can open the entire repository up for open contribution; at the other extreme, you can make Ardoq Discover a purely read-only platform. The optimal solution probably lies somewhere in-between.

Whatever you decide, understanding how Surveys integrate with Ardoq Discover will help you plan your processes.

Exposing a survey to Ardoq Discover means the survey will open directly in the app, rather than navigating you to a separate survey landing page.

This means that Ardoq Discover becomes an alternative entry-point into a survey.

You may sometimes have more than one survey for each component type. Ardoq Discover gives you the ability to expose multiple surveys for each component.

Both the surveys you expose to Ardoq Discover and the text you display in Ardoq Discover’s survey buttons and menu are completely configurable.

And of course, the customizability of Surveys means you have the option of which component fields you want to expose for editing in the interface.

Adding surveys is straightforward and can be done using the same Survey Builder the Ardoq administrator uses to set up surveys. However, there are a couple of additional steps in the Builder unique to Ardoq Discover.

In the Response Feedback section, the Ardoq administrator can choose to display a message to the users submitting survey responses through Discover.

This will then be displayed to the user in Ardoq Discover after they hit submit on an open Survey.

The Ardoq Discover section contains the options to determine how your survey will be exposed in Ardoq Discover’s user interface.

The first option is a simple checkbox to determine if your survey will be exposed in Ardoq Discover. It’s important to understand that whatever you choose, your survey will still be accessible via the existing entry points of the Survey Landing Page and Broadcasts, so this is not an either/or option.

Checking this box will allow you to add a survey into the Submit an update submenu. You can use the Survey Label control to determine the text you want to be displayed, enabling you to replace your survey’s name with a clear call to action, for example. The survey’s description will also be displayed.

If you want to give your survey additional prominence in Ardoq Discover you can check the Set as priority survey checkbox. This will display your survey label directly in a button in the sidebar rather than in the Submit an update submenu. You can have a priority Survey and any number of secondary surveys displayed for each component type.

However, you can only have one priority Survey per component type. If you’ve already added a priority survey and try to add another, you’ll get a redirect link to the Survey Builder to the existing survey where you can deselect it.

👉 Please keep in mind that the survey you connected to Discover may not appear immediately there due to the technical implementation logic. As a quick workaround, if you want to see one appear immediately, you can toggle the Live to off and then back to on immediately.

Ardoq’s surveys are based on Component Types such as Applications, Business Products, or Departments. Each survey relates to one Component Type, its fields, and its references.

This means that Ardoq administrators can send out links to all the survey forms for one type (e.g. all Applications) or a filtered list (e.g. All Applications for Department X).

In some cases administrators may want to give their contributors the ability to update more than one linked type at the same time. For example, to update the details for an Application and the Servers it runs on, or a Business Process and the Team who performs it. This can mean having to navigate between different surveys.

Ardoq Discover makes that process easier by allowing users to seamlessly navigate between surveys for different component types when their underlying components are related. The key here is for the Ardoq administrator to:

In the example below, you can see a viewpoint that includes an Application (SAP ERP) and its related Business Products, Servers and Locations. From this viewpoint, you can also access SAP ERP’s Application Survey via the sidebar.

However, you can also single-click on one of the Products it supports, enabling the contributor to access the survey for that product via the sidebar too.

In this way, contributors can navigate between different surveys for related components all within the same UI, making it easier to perform data updates.

You can build multi-step workflows using Surveys and Broadcasts. Integrating Surveys into Ardoq Discover means that workflow processes can now be initiated from the Ardoq Discover interface by updating a survey. This update can then be used to trigger alerts, reviews, escalations, and more. The ability to link Ardoq Discover with Broadcasts means that you can now also provide visual feedback throughout these processes, showing users their interactions have been detected, interpreted, and handled. Visual feedback can help encourage user interaction.