Surveys, Forms and Questionnaires for Organisations
Overview
Every community organisation collects information from people. A theatre company needs to know what the audience thought of the show. A choir needs to know who can make Tuesday rehearsals. A dance school needs membership details and consent. A heritage site needs visitor feedback for its funders. Most groups do this with a mixture of paper slips, spreadsheets and a free online form tool that has nothing to do with the rest of their records.
Surveys & Forms is the part of Seaty that replaces all of that. You build the questions once, share them by link, QR code or email, and read the answers back on a results screen that keeps them alongside the rest of your records. Where somebody replied to a personal emailed invitation, their response also carries the event date and ticket type they came from.
Who uses this: Organisation administrators with the Surveys permission.
At its simplest, this feature answers one question: what do the people around our organisation actually think, need or have to tell us?
Key capabilities:
- Create a survey, a form or a questionnaire, each with its own behaviour
- Choose from seven question types, including ratings, recommendation scores and documents people must agree to
- Start from scratch, from a ready-made template, or let Seaty AI draft one for you to edit
- Decide whether responses are identified, confidential or anonymous
- Share by link or QR code, or email an audience of attendees, members or admins
- Read results as charts, as a table of individual responses, or as a chase list of people who have not replied yet
- Filter results by event date and ticket type, print them, or export them to a spreadsheet
How It Works
At a glance: You accept the terms, choose what kind of thing you are creating, build the questions, open it, share it, and then read what comes back.
1. Accept the terms
The create dialog opens on a confirmation. Before you can go any further you tick to accept the Terms of Service and the Data Processing Agreement, and to confirm that your organisation is the data controller for the responses it collects and must have a lawful basis for anything it asks. The Continue button stays disabled until you do, and the server refuses to create a survey without it, so this is not a step you can skip.
2. Choose the purpose
Next you pick one of three purposes: Survey, Questionnaire or Form. This is not a label. It changes how the thing behaves, particularly around whether you can see who answered.
3. Build the questions
You can start from a blank sheet, load one of the built-in templates, or describe what you want and let Seaty AI draft a complete first version for you to edit. Either way you end up in a builder where you write the title, the introduction people read first, the questions themselves, and the thank-you message shown when they finish.
4. Open it
A new survey starts as a draft and collects nothing. Nothing is recorded until you open it, and you cannot open one that has no questions. You can close it again at any time, and everything already collected stays readable.
Why the draft stage? It gives you somewhere to build and preview safely. Once the first response arrives the questions lock permanently, so the draft stage is your only chance to get them right.
5. Share it
Every survey has a shareable link and a QR code, both available as soon as it has been saved, including while it is still a draft. What changes when you open it is whether responses are accepted. You can also email it to an audience: everyone who opted in to surveys, the attendees of a particular event who opted in, your organisation members, or your organisation admins. On every type except anonymous, emailed invitations carry a personal link, which is what lets Seaty tell you later which performance somebody came to. An anonymous survey deliberately sends no personal link, so nothing ties an answer back to an invitation.
6. Read the results
Results arrive live. There is a summary of charts and scores, a table with one row per response, and, on identified surveys that you emailed, a list of the people who have not replied yet.
Think of it this way:
- A survey asks people what they thought
- A questionnaire asks people what they need or prefer
- A form asks people for details you must be able to attach to their name
Choosing Between a Survey, a Form and a Questionnaire
All three are built in the same place with the same question types. What differs is the posture towards identity.
| Purpose | What it is for | Who can see the respondent |
|---|---|---|
| Survey | Opinions and feedback about something people attended, like a show or an event | Your choice: identified, confidential or anonymous |
| Questionnaire | Gathering information more directly, like preferences and details that help you plan | Your choice: identified, confidential or anonymous |
| Form | Required details from your members, like a cast or volunteer form | Always identified. Forms always record who responded |
The wording throughout Seaty follows your choice. If you create a form, respondents are told they have already responded "to this form", not "to this survey".
Two further differences are worth knowing before you choose:
- Forms cannot be made anonymous. The anonymity picker does not appear for them, and the setting is forced on the server as well, so there is no way to end up with a form whose responses you cannot attribute. Why? A cast list or a consent record is worthless if you do not know whose it is.
- Forms open on the table of responses, because with a form you usually want to read a specific person's entry. Surveys and questionnaires open on the summary charts, because with those you usually want the overall picture.
Realistic examples
| What you want to do | Use a... | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Audience feedback after a show | Survey | Opinions about something people attended, best kept confidential |
| Membership sign-up or renewal | Form | Operational details that must be attached to a named person |
| Audition applications | Form | You need to know who applied, and for what |
| Rehearsal availability for the cast and crew | Questionnaire | Planning information gathered directly, not opinion |
| Volunteer recruitment | Form | Contact details and availability tied to a named volunteer |
| Visitor experience at a heritage site | Survey | Feedback on a visit, where honesty benefits from confidentiality |
If you are unsure, ask yourself whether you would ever need to go back to one specific person about their answer. If yes, use a form. If no, a survey or questionnaire will serve you better, and people usually answer more honestly when they know you are not reading their name.
See Building a survey for the question types, the templates and the AI drafting.
What Respondents See
Respondents open a plain, mobile-friendly page carrying your organisation's branding. They see your organisation name, the title, your introduction, and a short statement telling them honestly how their answers will be handled, with a link to the storage details.
By default nobody needs a Seaty account. Anyone with the link can respond. You can require a verified Seaty account instead, which is worth doing when responses must come from registered members.
There is no way to edit an answer after submitting. Once somebody presses submit, that is their response. If they made a mistake, an administrator can delete the response so they can start again.
See Completing a survey for the respondent's side of this, which you can share with anyone who asks.
Anonymity, Briefly
There are three modes, and for surveys and questionnaires you choose one:
- Identified shows you who said what.
- Confidential segments results while hiding who answered. This is the default for a new survey.
- Anonymous collects no name and no email address at all, and the results screens give you no way to work out who answered.
Whichever you choose, respondents are told plainly which one applies before they answer, with a link to how responses are stored.
Two consequences catch people out, so they are worth stating here:
- On anything that is not identified, results are hidden until at least five responses exist. Why? With three answers from a committee of five, a breakdown identifies people whether you intended it to or not.
- A chase list of people who have not replied is only available on identified surveys. Why? Listing who has not responded reveals who has, which is exactly what anonymous and confidential responses are promised protection from.
Anonymity is enforced when the results are produced, not by hiding columns on screen, so a spreadsheet export and a printout carry precisely the same restrictions as the screen does.
The answers belong to the organisation that collected them, and that organisation decides how they are used. That is why accepting the Data Processing Agreement comes first: you are the data controller for what you ask and what you do with the replies.
See Anonymity and data protection for the full picture, including how to remove one person's responses on request.
Tying a Survey to an Event
Surveys live at organisation level so you can reuse them. The same membership form serves every season, and the same audience feedback survey serves every show. That is the default, and for most things it is the right one.
Some are genuinely about one production, though, so Setup has an optional question: Is this for a specific event? Leave it as Not tied to an event and nothing changes. Pick an event and three things happen:
- It is filed under that event, and appears in that event's own Surveys & Forms section
- The Send screen starts you on that event's attendees rather than your general survey opt-ins
It does not change the responses themselves. Which performance and ticket type a response is linked to still comes from the personal link in an emailed invitation, and nothing else. A response that arrives through a shared link or a printed QR code carries no performance against it whether the survey is pinned or not, so it will not appear in the event date or ticket type breakdowns. Pinning tells you which show a survey was about; it does not tell you which show a response was about.
You can pin a survey at any time and unpin it again, including after responses have arrived. Nothing already collected changes either way.
The organisation Surveys list groups by this. Your reusable ones sit at the top under your organisation's name, then one group per event, most recent event first.
Working from the event instead
Every event has its own Surveys & Forms section that behaves exactly like the organisation one, filtered to that event. You can build, send and read results there without leaving the event, and anything you create is tied to that event automatically.
It shows two kinds of survey: those pinned to the event, and those that were merely emailed to its attendees. The second kind is still an organisation-level survey and still appears under your organisation's name in the main list. That is not a glitch. The main list groups by what a survey is for; the event section asks what is related to this event, which is a wider question.
Sending It Out
Sharing is deliberately simple. Every survey has a link and a QR code from the moment it exists, draft or not, though nothing is recorded until you open it. The QR code suits a programme, a poster in the foyer or a card left on seats. The link suits a newsletter or a social post.
Emailing is more powerful, because on every type except anonymous each recipient gets their own link. That is what allows Seaty to tell you afterwards that the people who came on the Saturday matinee rated the sound differently from the Friday night audience, and it is what stops the same person responding twice when you have asked for one response each.
You can preview exactly who will receive an email before you send it, see the addresses, skip anybody who has already been sent it, and send a test to yourself first.
See Sending and sharing for audiences, suppression options and the email itself.
Reading the Results
The survey's side menu is a flat list: Setup, Questions, Overview and Send for building and sharing it, then up to three more entries for reading what came back:
- Summary is the dashboard: headline cards, a chart per question, a daily chart of responses over time, and the written comments. Open text answers are capped at the 500 most recent per question, and when there are more than that a notice above them tells you how many you are seeing and points you to the Responses download for the rest. Clicking any bar, slice or column opens the actual responses behind it.
- Responses is a table with one row per response and a column per question. It uses the same reporting engine as the rest of Seaty, so you get sorting, filters, column control, printing and a spreadsheet export.
- Not responded lists everybody you emailed who has not replied, so you can chase them. Bear in mind that somebody who used a shared link or QR code cannot be matched to their invitation, so they may appear here even though they did respond.
Above all three sit the same filters for event date and ticket type, drawn from the responses themselves. Because a survey belongs to your organisation rather than to a single event, you can reuse the same audience feedback survey season after season and still break the results down by production.
See Reading results for the charts, the scores and the export options.
What Locks, and When
This is the single most important operational rule in the feature, so plan around it.
Once the first response arrives, these can never be changed:
- The purpose (survey, form or questionnaire)
- The anonymity mode
- Every question: its wording, its type, its options, its helper text and its order
These stay editable for the life of the survey:
- The title
- The introduction and the thank-you message
- Whether it is open or closed
- Whether one person may respond more than once
- Whether a Seaty account is required
Why lock the questions? Because changing a question after people have answered it silently corrupts the results. Half your respondents would have answered a different question from the other half, and nothing on the results screen could tell you which.
The practical advice is to send a test to yourself and read the whole thing on a phone before you share it widely. If you need to change a question afterwards, take a copy of the survey and start collecting again on the copy.
Common Questions
Getting started
Do I have to decide between a survey, a form and a questionnaire straight away? Yes. It is the first choice you make in the create dialog after accepting the terms. You can change it in Setup afterwards, but only until the first response arrives.
Can I reuse a survey for next season's show? Yes. Surveys belong to your organisation, not to an event. The event is chosen when you send it, so the same survey can be emailed to several productions' attendees and the results can still be filtered by production.
Can I duplicate an existing survey? Yes. There is a copy action in the list, which is the usual way to make a fresh start when the questions of an existing one are locked.
What happens to surveys I no longer need? You can archive them. Archiving moves them out of the main list into an archived section and they can be restored later. It is not a deletion, and the responses are kept.
Respondents
Does somebody need a Seaty account to respond? Not unless you require one. By default anyone with the link can respond.
Can somebody respond twice? Only if you allow it. When you do not, Seaty blocks a repeat from the same invitation link or the same email address. On an anonymous survey neither of those checks is possible, because no invitation is tied to the response and no email address is collected, so all that stands in the way is the soft block on the device they used. Turning repeats on suits things like a sign-in sheet used at every rehearsal.
Somebody answered a question wrongly. Can they correct it? Not themselves. There is no edit-after-submit anywhere in the feature. An administrator can delete their response, after which they can respond again.
A foyer tablet says the survey has already been answered. That is a soft block for the device, not for the person. There is an "Answer as someone else" button on that screen so a shared device is not locked out.
Results and privacy
Why can I not see any results yet? On a confidential or anonymous survey, breakdowns are hidden until at least five responses exist, to protect the people who have already answered.
Why is there no list of people who have not responded? That list is only produced for identified surveys, and only once you have emailed it to somebody. On confidential and anonymous surveys it would reveal who had answered.
Can I find out who wrote a particular comment on a confidential survey? There is a reveal action for confidential responses, and every use of it is recorded in the survey's audit log. It is intended for safeguarding and welfare concerns, not curiosity. It does not exist for anonymous surveys, because no name or email address was collected to reveal.
Can I get the results into a spreadsheet? Yes, from the Responses table or the Not responded list. The summary charts can be printed instead.
Permissions
Who in my organisation can use this? Anybody holding the Surveys permission, which sits in the Organisation permission group. That one permission covers the whole feature, including reading results, sending emails and revealing a confidential identity, so grant it only to people you would trust with all of it. See Managing members.
Can somebody with report access read survey responses? No. The survey reports are not offered in the event or organisation report lists, and the server checks the Surveys permission before it returns any survey report data, so general report access is not enough on its own. See Reporting.