Surveys are a great tool for including more stakeholders to contribute with data, without having to learn how to use Ardoq. This is especially powerful for gathering data from the Business side of your organization given that surveys look like any other form with explanatory text.
There are three major use cases for Surveys:
Data collection
Data enrichment (i.ex. updated, adding attributes)
Data validation
This article walks you through how to a create a survey from scratch. Here, you can also find a detailed explanation of the different features in each section of the Survey Builder.
To learn how to generate a survey, check out the "How to Automatically Create a Survey" KB article.
Table of Contents:
Before Getting Started
To create a survey, you must be an admin user or writer user and have the “Create Surveys” privilege enabled. Learn how to enable this privilege in the How to Allow Users to Create And Share a Survey KB article.
To allow users to edit a survey you must grant them permission on that particular survey. Learn more about survey permissions in this KB article.
You can create surveys for specific users and permission groups, and they will only have access to create or update what you decide.
You can easily identify which changes have been submitted through survey submissions using hidden fields.
How to Build a Survey From Scratch:
1. General information
Click on "Surveys" from the home page and click on 'Create new > Survey' from the survey overview page. Alternatively, select the component and choose "Create from the selected component" from the Survey menu.
You will then see the Survey builder. Here you can give your survey a name, email address, and description.
Make sure you enable survey digest emails to receive updates about the survey submission.
2. Data selection
Select the workspace and the component type you would like to build the survey for. A Survey can revolve around one component type and its associated relationship and field.
You can also allow respondents to create new components or delete existing ones in your repository through your survey. Please note, that the survey has to be published before the components will be deleted.
Using advanced search
You can further filter the components to be included in your survey by using the 'Advanced Search'. By clicking the 'Use Advanced Search' button, this will let you configure advanced filters for the components by applying filtering rules. By clicking 'Preview Survey Components', you can see which components are being selected.
In the example above, applications with Hosting type as Cloud will only be exposed in the survey.
Note: It is not currently possible to create an advanced search based on references, and the workaround is to create a calculated field based on references and use it for filtering.
To get a better understanding of advanced search, please refer to this article.
3. Questions
There are currently five types of questions in survey builder: field question, reference question, text section, hidden field, tag question.
Field Questions
Click on "Add question" to create questions for your survey based on field or reference. You may also add a text section here to display in the survey.
In the example below, a field question is created for the field "Description."
Set the field question as you see in the image above. This does not indicate that respondents need to answer the question, but if you would like to achieve that set the "is this field required" checked.
If you're creating a parent field question, be sure to utilize advanced search to narrow down the list of answer options to only those relevant to the parent component of the selected component.
Reference Question
You can also create a survey question for references. In the example below, a reference is created for the Application owner. The component type here for Person from the People workspace, and the direction of the reference is selected as Incoming and of type Owns.
Note: We allow you to use Advanced Search for reference questions; please be mindful of how you use these, as you can easily create conflicts with existing data filters. When possible, default to using the Define the Data > Advanced Search filters over Advanced Search directly on the question.
You can select the permission level you want to grant survey respondents when responding to a reference question: Create, Update, and Delete; Read-Only; Field Edit Only.
Tip: Choose the component field that will appear next to the component in the dropdown menu of reference question answers to avoid wrong answers when dealing with components with the same or similar names:
Note: Identifying field can be added only on custom fields.
The reference question is also required, and the minimum number of references is set to be 1. The application will therefore need at least one reference in the status field.x
You can create a text or reference field question for a reference question by clicking on ‘Add a section to reference question’. The image below shows how a field question would look like for the reference question for the application owner.
Note: It is recommended to provide a good description for better quality answers to survey questions.
Hidden Field
A hidden field is a field you can configure with a default value. The field will be invisible to the Survey contributors, but will be a part of the Survey submission when the contributors presses submit.
Updates to a field can be used to determine for example:
Last review date
Whether a component has been updated through a Survey
To indicate that the component updates should be reviewed
For instance, this can be used aid data governance. Customers have been adding hidden checkbox field and/or date field and are using this to check if a component have been updated through a Survey.
Tag Question
Enterprise architects often use tags when working with components. Tags can help categorize, filter, and add context to data. It's great if you can get some help from stakeholders to maintain the relevancy of this data. If you're using tags, you can create Tag Questions, allowing your stakeholders to assist in categorizing data using the tags you've defined.
Please keep in mind that you can only create one tag question per survey because only one component type can be used.
To add a tag question, go to the survey builder, then navigate to Survey Section > Add section > Tag Question.
4. Feedback Message
Make sure you take advantage of this feedback message section. Let your coworkers know you're grateful for their effort in keeping information up to date, or use this to help them smoothly complete or continue their journey.
Message example could be:
"Thank you for helping us keep the {Company Name} enterprise knowledge base up to date! Please navigate to Ardoq Discover to review your changes!"
5. Landing Page
Click on the Enable survey landing page option to enable or disable the landing page so that respondents will only see existing entries.
6. Results Display
The next tab of the survey is called Results Display. Results Display is an option that can be configured to give Survey contributors the ability to narrow down the list of components that they are seeing. For example, a Result Filter configured to the People workspace, on an ownership reference type, will let owners more easily find components that are relevant to them.
There are two types of filters you can apply:
Filtering by referenced components
Filtering by hierarchy (parent)
Filtering by referenced components lets you select which group of components to show based on which components they reference or are referenced by. This can be useful when component groups are defined by references, rather than the hierarchy.
In the following example, the result filtering is defined by which technology is referenced. For the survey taker, this will be shown as a navigator to the left of the screen, where it is possible to select a technology. Selecting a technology will show all the components which already exist and can be documented by the survey, which are connected to that technology:
Filtering by Hierarchy (parent) can come in handy when working with multi-layer component structures. It does not in any way limit what components are available for the survey takers to document, but adds a hierarchy navigator to the left of the survey. This makes it easier to show just the components which are relevant to the survey taker.
In the following example, we have a survey used to document what technologies the employees in different countries are familiar with. For example, you work in the United Kingdom and want to document which technologies your colleagues in that country are familiar with. Rather than having to scroll through the worldwide list of employees, you can simply click United Kingdom in the hierarchy navigator, and only components corresponding to employees in the United Kingdom will be shown:
6. Ardoq Discover
Make sure to connect your survey to Ardoq Discover to empower individuals with the ability to update information whenever they need.
Once you do this, the survey will immediately appear in Ardoq Discover. Make sure you have set up a clear name for the survey button. This will enable people to update information while reviewing insights in Ardoq Discover.
7. Save and Go Live
Finally, remember to save changes and set the survey to Live. Next, assign a permission to your survey to define who can submit responses and share it with your stakeholders. Learn more about survey permissions in the section below.
Go back to the survey overview page, to view the status of your surveys:
Live - the "Live" toggle of the survey in the survey builder is on.
Draft - the "Live" toggle of the survey in the survey builder is off.
Make Survey Engaging for Your Colleagues
Make your surveys more interactive with links and text formatting that creates a more structured and engaging experience for survey respondents, ultimately improving submission rates.
When creating or editing survey questions, look for the rich text option above the text window. Simply click to access a range of formatting tools and add links, images, videos and apply more formatting seamlessly.
Please feel free to reach out if you have any questions, or need help with creating the perfect Surveys for your organization.
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