What Survanta does

What Survanta does

Survanta is a survey platform for organizations that design questionnaires, coordinate field collection, review responses, and turn structured data into analysis. It combines web-based administration and survey design with a mobile application for signed-in field users.

This guide is a capability overview for organizations evaluating the platform. It explains the current workflow and its boundaries without assuming a technical background.

Design structured questionnaires

Survey authors work on the web. They can arrange a questionnaire as:

• main sections that organize the subject areas;
• groups that keep related questions together;
• individual questions;
• dynamic tables for repeated rows of structured information.

This structure supports a short feedback form as well as a longer research instrument with household, facility, program, or service-delivery records.

The structure also gives analysis teams recognizable units. Authors can assign a Code to a question, group, main section, or dynamic table and use that Code later in the Analytics Entity Explorer.

Available question types

Survanta currently supports these 13 question types.

The File type covers file collection. Image is not a separate question type.

Apply validation at design time

Authors can make a question required and configure validation appropriate to its type.

The current authored validation settings are:

• required or optional;
• a displayed unit for numeric answers;
• maximum and minimum text length;
• minimum and maximum numeric value;
• number of decimal places;
• minimum and maximum date;
• maximum file size;
• maximum number of files;
• allowed file type codes.

Validation matters because it gives field teams and public respondents feedback before an invalid value becomes part of the response record. Authors should still test the questionnaire with realistic values before publishing it.

Create conditional experiences

Conditions let a questionnaire react to an earlier answer. The available actions are:

• Show;
• Hide;
• Require;
• Disable;
• Repetition.

Comparison and matching can use Equals, Not Equals, Greater Than, Less Than, Greater Than or Equal, Less Than or Equal, Contains, Starts With, Ends With, and In.

This allows a respondent to see only the questions that apply to their situation. For example, answering No to receiving a service can hide detailed service-rating questions, while answering Yes can reveal them.

Conditions reduce irrelevant questions, but they also affect how analytics should be interpreted. Question coverage uses all stored survey responses because separate condition-based eligibility is not stored for each question.

Repeat questions, groups, and table blocks

Repetition is part of the conditions system. It uses the Repetition action with one of these cardinality operators:

Fixed Count is controlled by the author. A respondent's answer does not override that number.

Count From Answer requires an Integer source question. Repetition can target:

• one Question;
• one Group;
• one Dynamic Table block.

The maximum is 20 occurrences. Nested repetition is not supported: a repeating question inside a repeating group is rejected by the authoring layer.

Table rows and repeated table blocks are different

Dynamic Table Row Count Control creates one table with a respondent-driven number of rows. Repeating a Dynamic Table block creates separate copies of the complete table, and every copy has its own rows.

Worked example

An agriculture survey asks, “How many plots do you manage?” The respondent answers 3.

Use row count control when every answer represents one row in a single roster. Use block repetition when each occurrence needs a separate table context.

Collect with signed-in field users

The mobile application is for signed-in field users. Surveys are designed and published on the web, then made available to the field team through their organization access.

With a survey already available on the device, a signed-in field user can:

• start a response;
• answer questions and add dynamic-table rows;
• save unfinished work and resume it later;
• continue collecting without a usable connection;
• submit into a local queue when a transfer cannot complete;
• review responses already submitted under their account.

Offline collection applies to signed-in field users. Opening and completing a public link or QR survey is online-only.

Understand when mobile synchronization happens

The mobile app attempts to send a response immediately after submission. Queued responses are retried when the running app:

• starts;
• resumes in the foreground;
• regains connectivity;
• receives a manual retry from the user.

There is no operating-system worker that continues synchronization while the app is closed. A queued item may therefore remain on the device until the app is running again with a usable connection.

Reach respondents through different channels

Organizations can choose among collection channels according to the study.

Public links and QR access provide another way to reach respondents; they do not grant access to the tenant dashboard or to another organization's survey data.

Review and correct responses

Authorized dashboard users can review submitted responses. Repeated occurrences remain distinct and can be shown with occurrence labels so a reviewer can understand which answer belongs to which person, visit, asset, or other repeated unit.

Where survey settings and user permissions allow correction, an authorized user can edit an already-submitted response. Editing a submitted response is online-only.

The mobile app also lets a signed-in field user review responses submitted under their account, subject to the survey's response settings.

Export response data

Authorized users can filter and export response data for further analysis. Export is separate from the visual analytics area: it supports workflows that need the response data outside the dashboard, while analytics provides aggregate views inside Survanta.

Permission and plan controls determine whether a user can perform an export. Public respondents do not receive dashboard export access merely by opening a survey link.

Explore analytics by authored Code

The tenant analytics area has three surfaces:

• a dashboard with survey counts, completed-response count, all-time response count, and response activity;
• an Entity Explorer for one coded Question, Question group, Main section, or Dynamic table;
• a two-code Comparison for common metrics.

Type-aware reports can show answer distributions, numeric summaries, question and section fill, repeated-group occurrence distributions, and dynamic-table row and column patterns where applicable.

Cross-type comparison is deliberately limited to common normalized metrics. Survanta omits incompatible counts or chart measures rather than placing unlike units in one comparison row.

Control access at the organization level

Tenant administrators manage users and permission groups for their organization. Permission groups define which areas and actions a user can access, such as survey management, field operations, response review, analytics, or export.

Public participants are separate from organization users. They do not receive dashboard permissions through a public link or QR code.

Surveys, responses, users, files, settings, public access records, exports, and integration access are scoped to their owning organization. Authorized platform operations use separate controls when support staff need to work in a selected organization context.

Current boundaries to plan for

• Public-link and QR collection requires a connection.
• Editing a submitted response requires a connection.
• Mobile synchronization does not run while the app is closed.
• Count From Answer requires an Integer source question.
• Repetition is limited to 20 occurrences.
• Nested repetition is not supported.
• Dynamic Table Row Count Control creates rows in one table; it does not repeat the table block.
• The mobile application currently uses a light theme.

What to look at next

• Getting started
• Creating your first survey
• Survey Builder guide
• From design to insight
• Survanta Mobile overview
• Working offline and synchronization
• Analytics overview
• Tenant isolation