Creating surveys

Build a multi-application survey, invite owners by email, and collect structured answers (five options per question).

Who this is for

Enterprise architects and application portfolio owners who need assessments (for example fitness, risk, or readiness) from application contacts.

You must be signed in. At least one application should exist in the tenant (from onboarding or Create → New Application).

How to open it

Create → New Survey — starts a new draft immediately.
Create → Surveys — list, search, and open existing surveys; New survey starts the same wizard.

Opening New Survey without an id creates a draft and redirects to step 1 of the wizard.

Survey list

The Surveys page shows draft vs launched counts, search by name or description, and status. You can seed demo application fitness surveys and responses from this page when those buttons appear; that is optional sample data, not required for a custom survey.

Wizard overview

The wizard has four steps. You can Save as Draft on steps 1–3, Preview jump to step 4, or Previous step to go back. After launch, the survey is read-only.

Step 1 — Setup

Field	Required to continue	Notes
Survey name	Yes	Up to 500 characters.
Description	Yes	Context for respondents; up to 8000 characters.
Target audience	At least one tag	Chips such as App Owners or BU Leads. Use Add tag or the preset buttons.
Target applications	At least one	Search and pick applications. Each selection is added to the list.

Choose Next Step only after name, description, tags, and applications are complete.

Step 2 — Questions

Add at least one question. Each question needs:

Question text (prompt)
Five answer option labels (all five required)

Empty rows (no prompt and no options) are ignored. Incomplete rows block Next Step.

Step 3 — Distribution

Field	Required to continue	Notes
Closing date	Yes	Today or a future date (UTC date). Cannot be in the past.
Anonymous responses	No	When enabled, responses are treated as anonymous.
Reminder frequency	No	Every 3 days, Weekly, On deadline day, or No reminders.

Step 4 — Review and launch

Review name, description, audience tags, applications, questions with options, anonymity, closing date, and reminders.

Choose Launch when everything is correct. Launch is blocked if the survey is already launched or closed, or if setup/questions/distribution rules are not met.

After launch, status is Launched and the form cannot be edited.

What launch does

Sets survey status to Launched.
Creates invitations for each target application that has owner emails (application owner, business owner, and related owner emails on the application record).
Emails each recipient a unique Respond link (/Survey/Respond?token=…). The link is single-use after submit.
Optionally notifies Surveys:LaunchNotifyEmail if that setting is configured.

If no owner emails are on the applications, launch still succeeds but no invitations are sent. Add emails on the applications and plan a new survey or contact owners directly.

Email failures are logged; the survey remains launched.

Respondents

Recipients open the mailed link, answer each question by choosing one of the five options, and submit. They see a thank-you page when done. You can review submissions from the application survey response screens.

Statuses

Status	Meaning
Draft	Editable in the wizard.
Launched	Live; not editable.
Closed	Finished; not editable.

Tips

Put accurate Application owner email (and business owner email) on each application before launch.
Use audience tags for reporting and communication, not as the email list — invitations follow application owner emails.
Keep five options consistent (for example 1–5 Likert labels) so scores compare across applications.