Lightning surveys and Quick Survey

What this is

Most of what your team knows about a vendor, a carrier, a training course, or a new process never gets written down anywhere Verinode can read. It lives in a hallway comment or a quick text after a bad delivery. Lightning surveys are the fast path for capturing that: one question, sent to the right people, answered with a single number, no link to click and no form to fill in.

There are two doors into the same idea:

• Lightning mode, a mode inside the full New Survey modal on the Surveys page. It still has a subject picker and a full team-selection list, because it can be launched cold, from a page that has no single entity in view.
• Quick Survey, a button dropped straight into an entity's detail hero (a vendor, a tool, a carrier, a TPA program, a process, a certification). It skips the subject picker entirely because the entity you're already looking at is the subject. That inference is what makes it fast.

Both write to the same survey record and use the same one-number reply mechanism. The difference is only how much the operator has to tell Verinode versus how much Verinode already knows from where the button was clicked.

Verinode does not decide who to ask or what the answer means: it prepares a sensible default question and a sensible default audience so you can send in two clicks, and you can change either one before it goes out.

Where to find it

Lightning mode lives inside the survey creation modal reachable from the sidebar under Surveys, at /surveys. On that page, the Forms header has an add-survey button. When the Surveys tab is active (as opposed to Audits or Reviews), that button opens the New Survey modal, which opens with a two-way toggle at the top: Lightning (1 question) and Full survey. Lightning is the mode this article covers; Full survey is a longer, multi-question flow for structured assessments and is out of scope here.

Quick Survey is the button itself, not a page. It appears in the action row of an entity's detail view, wherever a vendor, tool, carrier, TPA program, process, or certification has its own detail hero. It carries a copper primary-button fill, the same tier as the main call to action in that hero, with a small speech-bubble icon. Clicking it opens the one-question modal directly, already addressed to that entity.

Lightning mode inside the New Survey modal

The mode toggle

At the top of the modal, two buttons sit side by side: Lightning (1 question) and Full survey. Whichever is active is filled dark; the other stays outlined. The modal remembers which one you picked for the rest of that open session. If the modal was launched from a decision plan carrying pre-written questions, it opens straight into Full survey; every other launch defaults to Lightning, because for most operators it's the simpler first impression.

What are you rating?

A dropdown with five options: Vendor, Tool, Carrier, TPA Program, Process. This sets the subject type, which in turn decides whether the next field is a dropdown or a free-text box.

Subject

• For Vendor or Tool, this becomes a dropdown of your active vendor relationships. Picking one auto-fills the question below with "How satisfied are you with [vendor name]?"
• For Carrier, TPA Program, or Process, this is a free-text box with the placeholder "e.g. Job intake process." Type the carrier, program, or process name directly.

Question

A single-line text field, pre-filled once you've picked a subject, fully editable. Under it: "Team members reply with a number 1-5. No link, no form." That line is not decoration, it is the actual mechanic: whoever receives this survey answers with a number from 1 to 5, by replying to the email or texting back, and Verinode reads that reply as the response. There is nothing for them to click through to and nothing to fill in.

Delivery

Three buttons: Email, SMS, Email + SMS. Whichever is selected is filled dark. Selecting SMS or Email + SMS unlocks two more things further down: an inline phone-number prompt next to any team member who doesn't have one on file, and a Quick add team member box for adding someone who isn't on your roster yet, by name and phone number only.

Invite Team Members

A scrollable checklist of your team roster. Each row shows the person's name, role, and whatever contact details you have for them (email, phone, or both, separated by a middot). A person can only be checked if they have the contact info the chosen delivery method needs, unselectable rows are dimmed. A Select all / Deselect all link above the list toggles every eligible row at once.

If you're signed in with an email address, a dashed-border row above the list reads Include me ([your email]) with a checkbox: "You'll get the same email as everyone else, answer alongside the team to test the wording or set the owner baseline." Checking it adds you to the send without taking a slot on the team roster.

If nobody is on your roster yet, the list reads: "No team members yet. Use quick add below."

If you quick-add someone without an email, a line appears under the roster: "Remember to add an email for [name] in the Team section so they can sign in."

Sending

The footer button reads Send now to N where N is however many people are currently checked, or an em-dash-style ", " placeholder when nobody is checked yet. Lightning mode has no draft state, it is send-now only (Full survey mode has a separate Save as draft button; Lightning does not).

Quick Survey on an entity detail page

This is the redesigned, faster version of the same idea, built for the common case: you're already looking at a vendor, and you want to know what the crew thinks of them, right now, without naming the subject yourself.

The inferred subject

Quick Survey knows the entity you launched it from because the button was rendered on that entity's own detail page. There is no subject picker. Instead, a small label at the top of the modal confirms context without dominating it: About · [entity name].

The default question

The question box is pre-filled the moment the modal opens, autofocused so you can start typing over it immediately if you want something different. The default wording depends on the entity type:

• Vendor or tool: "How is [name] working out for the team?"
• Carrier or TPA program: "How is the team finding work with [name]?"
• Certification: "Was the [name] training worth the time and cost?"
• Process: "How is the [name] process working in practice?"
• Anything else: "What does the team think about [name]?"

Under the box: "Team members reply with a number 1-5. No link, no form. ⌘+Enter to send." The keyboard shortcut is real, Cmd+Enter (or Ctrl+Enter on Windows) sends immediately from inside the question box without reaching for the mouse. Plain Enter just adds a line break, in case the question needs to run longer than one line.

If this modal was opened from a decision plan step that already prepared its own question (for example, a plan the decision workspace generated as one of its recommended next steps), that prepared wording lands in the box instead of the generic default. You can still edit it before sending. See acting on decisions for how a plan step turns into a live survey like this one.

Send to: audience presets

Three pill buttons under Send to:

• Everyone. Every team member on your roster.
• Leads. Anyone whose role includes the words "lead," "manager," "supervisor," or "owner." This is a role-text match, not a formal title field, so it catches "Crew Lead," "Ops Manager," "Site Supervisor," and similar variants automatically.
• Pick… Selecting this expands a scrollable list of your full team roster with a checkbox next to each name, role, and contact info. Click a row to toggle it. If your roster is empty, the expanded list reads: "No team members yet."

Whichever preset is active is the recipient pool that everything below reacts to.

Deliver via

This row only appears at all if at least one recipient in the current audience has a phone number on file. When it does appear, three pills: Email, SMS, Both. If nobody reachable in the current audience has a phone, the row is hidden entirely and delivery is email by default.

The reachable count and the send button

Not everyone in an audience preset necessarily has the contact info the chosen delivery method needs. Verinode counts only the recipients it can actually reach, someone with an email on file when delivery is Email, someone with a phone when it's SMS, either one when it's Both, and puts that number on the send button: Send to N person or Send to N people. If that count is zero, the button is disabled.

Trying to send with no question typed shows "Question is required." Trying to send to an audience where nobody is reachable (say, "Pick…" with nobody actually checked, or a delivery method nobody in the audience can receive) shows "No reachable team members in the current audience."

After sending

A confirmation reads "Survey sent to N person" or "Survey sent to N people," and the modal closes.

1. 1Open the detail page for the vendor, tool, carrier, TPA program, process, or certification you want feedback on.
2. 2Click Quick Survey in the hero action row.
3. 3Read the pre-filled question. Edit it if it doesn't say exactly what you want to ask.
4. 4Pick an audience: Everyone, Leads, or Pick… to hand-select recipients.
5. 5If SMS delivery is available and you want it, switch Deliver via to SMS or Both.
6. 6Click Send to N people (or press ⌘+Enter from inside the question box).

Why one number, no link

Every friction point between "I want your opinion" and "you gave it to me" loses respondents. A link that opens a form asks someone to stop what they're doing, open a browser, and fill in fields. A text or email reply asking for a single digit does not. Both Lightning mode and Quick Survey are built around that same reply mechanic on purpose: whoever receives the message texts back or replies with a number from 1 to 5, and that is the entire response. There is no dashboard for them to log into and no account for them to have.

Best-practice example

Say you just switched water-mitigation equipment vendors and want a gut check two weeks in. Open that vendor's detail page and click Quick Survey. The question is already pre-filled: "How is [vendor name] working out for the team?" Leave it as-is, or sharpen it to something like "Has the new drying equipment cut dry-out time on your last few jobs?" Set Send to to Leads so you hear from the site supervisors making the day-to-day call on it, not a companywide blast. If a couple of your leads are field-only and rarely check email, switch Deliver via to Both so the text reaches them too. Send, and the replies come back as plain numbers, no dashboard login required from your team, no extra step for you beyond reading what comes in.

Data sources