Surveys: multi-question network pulses

What Surveys is

Surveys is one of the five tabs in Broadcast, HQ's outbound dispatch channel to the network. It is the tool for asking your network a structured, multi-question question set, up to eight questions per survey, mixing rating scales, yes/no questions, and free text, and reading the answers back as an aggregated distribution. It sits between Announcements (one-way text, no response expected) and Polls (a single question with a short auto-close window): Surveys is for the pulse check that needs more than one question and doesn't need an answer in five seconds.

Verinode holds the same privacy boundary here that runs through the rest of HQ. Operators answer a survey from their own IQ surveys section, and HQ never sees who answered or what any individual operator wrote. What comes back to this tab is the aggregated distribution per question, computed by a background aggregator process, not a roster of responses. This is true regardless of whether your network calls its members franchisees, locations, or members: the label changes, the boundary does not.

Where to find it

Open Broadcast from the HQ sidebar, then click the Surveys tab in the pill strip under the page title. Surveys is also the one tab in that strip with its own clean URL: hq.verinode.ai/surveys loads this same tab directly, without a query string, so it can be linked or bookmarked on its own. The other tabs load at /broadcast (Announcements, the default) or /broadcast?tab=... (Initiatives, Polls, Consent).

Every HQ user can open this tab and see the hero numbers and the survey list. Authoring a new survey is restricted to admins: only they see the + New survey button in the page header.

The hero panel

At the top of the page, under the eyebrow "Network surveys," a headline number shows how many surveys you have sent in the last 30 days.

The pill beside the headline reads one of three things, in priority order:

• "N active", when at least one survey is currently sent and not yet closed.
• "N sent 30d", when nothing is active right now but at least one survey went out in the last 30 days.
• "Nothing sent recently", when neither is true.

The description line below it depends on whether you have ever authored a survey:

• If you have never authored one: "Send a multi-question pulse to every active operator. Operators answer from their IQ surveys section; HQ sees only the aggregated distribution per question, never per-member responses."
• If you have authored at least one: a running count plus, when available, how long ago the most recent send went out, for example "12 total surveys authored · last sent 3 days ago."

Three secondary metrics run alongside the headline:

• Responses 30d: the total response count aggregated across every survey sent in the last 30 days (sub-label: "Aggregated across all sent surveys"). This is a sum across surveys, computed from the same aggregate rows the detail modal reads, not a live operator-by-operator tally.
• Active surveys: how many surveys are currently sent and not yet closed (sub-label: "Sent + not yet closed"). A survey counts here from the moment you send it until its close date passes, or until an admin closes it manually.
• All-time surveys: your total survey count since you started using the feature, with "Last sent [X ago]" underneath, or "None sent yet" if you have never sent one.

None of these four numbers involve peer or benchmark data. They come entirely from your own network's own survey history.

The Surveys row

Below the hero, a row of tiles lists up to twelve surveys, newest authored first. Each tile shows:

• Label: the status, Draft, Active, or Closed. Active surveys are highlighted in copper; drafts and closed surveys sit in a neutral tone. A survey authored as a template for franchisees' own teams (see Two patterns, below) carries a · template suffix on the label so it reads visually distinct from a network-wide pulse.
• Headline: the survey's title.
• Sub-line, which reads differently depending on whether the survey has been sent and which pattern it is:

- Not yet sent: "N questions" (or "1 question" for a single-question survey). - Sent, network pulse pattern: "N responses · N questions", for example "14 responses · 3 questions." - Sent, template pattern: "N franchisees adopted · N questions" (the noun follows your network's terminology: franchisees, locations, or members).

• Meta line: "Not yet sent" for drafts, "Sent [X ago]" for active surveys, or "Closed [X ago]" once it has closed.

Empty state. If you have never authored a survey, this row reads: "No surveys authored yet. Use the New survey button to draft a multi-question pulse, then send it to the network."

Click any tile to open its detail modal.

Authoring a survey

Admins see a + New survey button in the page header. Clicking it opens a modal titled "New survey."

1. 1Optionally expand Verinode starter packs, a collapsible panel of curated question sets pulled from Verinode's template catalog. Clicking one pre-fills the Title and the full question list; every question stays editable afterward. The panel only appears when at least one starter pack is published, and it shows the category, whether it's tagged survey or poll, and its question count for each option.
2. 2Enter a Title (placeholder text reads "e.g. Q2 operations pulse").
3. 3Optionally set a Closes date. The helper text under it reads: "After this date the survey shows as Closed in the network's IQ feed; new responses are rejected."
4. 4Build the question list. Each question row shows its id (q1, q2, and so on), a text field for the question label, a type selector, and a Required checkbox (checked by default). Use + Add question to add another, up to a cap of 8; Remove deletes a row (hidden when only one question remains, since a survey needs at least one).
5. 5Click Save draft to hold the survey without sending it, or Send to network to create it and immediately dispatch it to every active operator in your network.

Question types. The type selector offers three choices: Rating (1-5), a five-point scale; Yes / No, a binary question; and Free text, an open response field. (Verinode's survey format also supports checkbox, scored, and signature question types, but those are reserved for self-audit forms elsewhere in the platform and don't appear in this authoring flow.)

Validation. Verinode rejects a save if the title is blank, if there are no questions, if any question is missing a label, or if two questions share the same id. A question label is capped at 200 characters. If you set a close date, it has to be in the future.

What happens on Save draft. The survey is written with no send timestamp and appears in the Surveys row as a Draft tile, visible only to HQ until an admin sends it.

What happens on Send to network. The survey is created and immediately sent: every active operator in your network gets an in-app notification, and the modal reports "Sent, delivered to N operators." (the delivered count is however many active operators the group currently has). If the survey saves successfully but the send step fails for some reason, the modal keeps the draft and tells you the send failed rather than losing your work. Either way, the page behind the modal refreshes a moment later so the new tile appears without a full page reload.

Opening a survey: the detail modal

Clicking any tile opens a modal titled with the survey's name. Inside:

• Pattern: "Sent to network (aggregated)" for a standard network pulse, or "Template for [franchisees/locations/members]' teams" for a template survey.
• Status: "Draft (not yet sent)"; "Active, sent [date]" with a "closes [date]" note appended when a close date is set; or "Closed [date]".
• One block per question, showing the question's label, its type, whether it's required or optional, and the response count so far.

Response breakdowns and the anonymity floor. Once a survey has been sent, each question's block tries to show a bar chart of the answer distribution, one row per answer option with a copper progress bar and a count-and-percentage. But Verinode withholds that breakdown until enough operators have answered to protect anonymity: below that floor, the block shows only how many have answered against how many are needed, not the histogram. This is deliberate. A distribution built from one or two responses would make it possible to guess who said what, so Verinode holds the breakdown back until there's enough of a crowd behind it. Once a question clears that floor, on any question with responses, the block still shows "No responses yet" until the aggregator's next pass has actually rolled any in.

Actions, gated by status and by whether you're an admin:

• Draft: admins see Delete draft and Send to network. Deleting a draft removes it permanently; sending it works exactly like Send to network in the authoring modal.
• Active: admins see Close now, which ends the survey immediately, no more responses are accepted, and its status flips to Closed.
• Closed: read-only, no action buttons beyond dismissing the modal.
• Non-admins always see just a Close button to dismiss the modal, regardless of the survey's status.

Two patterns behind one tab

Surveys and Polls share the same underlying table, so both this article and the Polls tab describe rows drawn from the same source, filtered so each tab only shows its own kind. Within the Surveys tab, two distinct patterns can appear:

• Network pulse (the pattern the New survey button always creates): a multi-question survey HQ sends straight to every active operator. Operators answer directly; HQ reads only the aggregated distribution, as described above.
• Team template: a ready-made question set franchisees can adopt to run with their own crews, rather than something HQ sends and reads answers to. HQ's view of a template tile shows only how many franchisees have adopted it, never anything about how their teams answered it internally. Template rows aren't created from the New survey button in this tab; they come from Verinode's separate template-provisioning path and appear here purely as reference tiles.

Best-practice example

Say you want a quarterly read on how operations are going across the network. Click + New survey, expand Verinode starter packs, and pick an operations-pulse starter if one is published, or build your own: a Rating question on overall satisfaction, a Yes/No on whether a recent process change is working, and a Free text question for open feedback. Set a Closes date two weeks out so stragglers have time to answer, then click Send to network. Over the next two weeks, check back on the Surveys tab: the Active pill and the Responses 30d figure move as answers come in. Once enough operators have answered a given question, its breakdown appears in the detail modal; until then you'll see a response count with the histogram held back. When the close date passes, the survey flips to Closed on its own, and the final distribution is there to read whenever you want it.

Data sources