Survey responses

When a volunteer finishes an activity, the app can ask them a few questions about how it went — that's a survey. This page is where those answers collect, so staff can keep an eye on how animals are doing across many activities.

Who can use this page: everyone can reach it. Staff and administrators see the whole organization. Volunteers and fosters see the surveys that are theirs — ones they submitted, and ones still waiting on an activity they ran — and can't edit a submitted one.

Pending vs completed

A response is pending when an activity was finished but its survey hasn't been filled in yet, and completed once it has. Filter by status or date to focus on what you need, then click a response to read the answers.

One activity can produce more than one response. If an activity type has several surveys attached — say a short first-time survey alongside the usual one — each is listed separately, and the volunteer is asked them one after another in the app. They all need answering before that activity is clear.

Finishing a survey you owe

A survey waiting on an activity you ran belongs to you, even though nobody has answered it yet and the Responder column is empty. It shows up on your list, and on the My pending surveys card on your dashboard.

You don't have to go back to the phone to finish it. On a pending survey for an activity you ran yourself, use Complete survey on the row: the same questions the mobile app would ask open in a panel, and submitting them records the answer exactly as a phone submission would. The button appears once the activity has ended — while it's still running there's nothing to report on yet.

Rows only offer what you're actually allowed to do. Open activity goes to the full activity record, which is a staff and administrator page, so volunteers and fosters don't see that button.

Who started it vs who responded

Every row shows two people, kept separate on purpose. Initiated by is whoever started the survey — the person who ran the activity that generated it — and it's shown even while the survey is still pending, so you can always chase an unfilled survey to a person. Responder is whoever actually submitted the answers, and stays blank until someone does (if an administrator force-submits a survey, the responder is the administrator who finalized it). A blank responder never means nobody owes the survey — the person named under Initiated by does.

Sorting the list

Click any of the Survey, Status, Animal, Responder, or Submitted column headers to reorder the whole list by that column; click the same header again to reverse the direction. The list sorts across every matching response, not just the page you're looking at, and keeps your active filters. By default it shows the most recently started responses first.

Where the questions come from

The questions in a survey are designed on the Survey builder page, and which survey appears after which activity is set up there too. If you want to change what volunteers are asked, that's the place to do it.

Fields explained

Field	What it means
Initiated by	The person who started the survey — the performer of the activity that generated it. Shown on every row and in the detail regardless of status, so a pending survey can be chased to a person. Distinct from the Responder, who is whoever submitted it.
Responder	The person who submitted the survey. Blank until it's submitted (for a force-submitted survey, this is the admin who finalized it). A survey that is still pending has no responder yet — that does not mean nobody owes it. The survey belongs to whoever ran the activity, shown under Initiated by.
Row actions	What a row offers depends on what you are allowed to do with it, so you are never sent to a screen that turns you away. Complete survey appears on a survey still waiting on an activity you ran yourself, once that activity has ended — it opens the same questions the mobile app asks. View responses reads the answers. Open activity goes to the full activity record and is for staff and admins; volunteers and fosters do not see it, because that page is not open to them.