Response Lifecycle

Overview

Every survey decides how its responses reach a final state. There are two choices, set once when the survey is created and locked as soon as the survey receives its first response.

• Simple completion — responses use only Not Complete and Complete. There is no review or approval cycle.
• Review workflow — responses are submitted for review and may be approved or returned to the collector for correction.

Simple Completion

Simple Completion keeps the two states most surveys need. A response is either still being worked on (Not Complete) or finished (Complete). Which of the two applies is decided by the survey's Completion method.

Automatic completion

With Automatically after required answers, the response becomes Complete only after all active, visible, and applicable required questions have valid answers.

• A partly answered response can still be saved; it simply stays Not Complete.
• Hidden questions, condition-disabled questions, and inactive or deleted questions never block completion.
• Required Dynamic Table rules and minimum-row rules continue to apply as normal.

Manual completion

With Manually by the respondent/collector, the person collecting the data decides when the response is finished. The survey player shows a Response status dropdown in the action area at the bottom of every step, with two choices:

• Not Complete
• Complete

The dropdown is the single control that decides completion. A new response always starts at Not Complete, and an existing response always opens showing the status it was last saved with — a reload or a move between steps never resets it. Because the control sits in the action area rather than inside the questions, it stays available on every step: while moving Previous/Next, between sections and groups, on Dynamic Table steps, and on the final step. The final step has no special power — whatever the dropdown shows when you save is what gets saved.

You can move the status in either direction for as long as the response is still editable, so a response saved as Complete can be reopened as Not Complete and saved again. That depends on the survey's existing response-editing setting: once a completed response is no longer editable, the status is shown as read-only text and the change is refused. This is a Simple Completion behaviour only — an Approved Review Workflow response stays locked permanently and is never reopened this way.

The same choice is available wherever a manual response is collected or corrected: the authenticated survey player, a public survey link, Add Response, and Response Edit.

Why required questions do not block manual completion

This is deliberate. In manual mode the collector — not the system — owns the decision that a response is finished. Field work often produces responses that are legitimately final even though a question could not be answered: the respondent declined, the question did not apply in practice, or the information was genuinely unavailable.

Required markers stay visible because they belong to the survey design, but in this mode they are informational. If you choose Mark as Complete while required questions are unanswered, you get a non-blocking confirmation and can continue.

Validation is not switched off. Any value you do supply is still fully checked: question type, numeric range, decimal precision, date range, valid choices, lookup validity, file type, size and count, and Dynamic Table structure.

A manual response also never completes by itself. Even if every required answer happens to be present, it stays Not Complete until Mark as Complete succeeds.

Review Workflow

Review Workflow adds a fixed review cycle. There are no configurable options.

Draft → Submitted → Under Review → Approved

If corrections are needed:

Draft → Submitted → Under Review → Returned for Correction → Resubmitted → Under Review → Approved

Draft and Submit for Review

A new response starts as Draft and Not Complete. The collector can save partial work freely — required questions do not block a draft save, though any value supplied is still validated.

Submit for Review is available from Draft. Before the response moves on, every active, visible, and applicable required question must have a valid answer. Once submitted, the collector can no longer edit the answers.

Under Review

A reviewer with the response-review permission starts the review. The response stays locked to the collector while it is being reviewed.

Returned for Correction

While a response is Under Review, the reviewer can return it. A reason is always required and is limited to 1000 characters. The reason is shown prominently to the collector on the response details and edit pages.

The collector can edit the answers again. Saving corrections does not resubmit the response — it stays Returned for Correction until the collector explicitly resubmits.

Resubmitted

Resubmit sends the corrected response back for review and enforces required answers again. The response locks against collector editing once more. The most recent return reason is kept for reference.

Approved and locked responses

Approve is the only way a Review Workflow response becomes Complete. Approval is final within this feature: approved responses are permanently locked. Editing is removed from the interface and blocked on every route, including direct links and the authenticated API. There is no reopen action.

Response filters and action-required indicators

The responses list shows four separate pieces of information, never combined into a single badge:

• Completion — Not Complete or Complete.
• Review status — shown only for Review Workflow responses.
• Editability — Editable or Locked.
• Action required — Collector action required, Reviewer action required, or No action required.

You can filter the list by survey, response lifecycle, completion status, review status, editability, and action required. Filtering and paging run on the server, so large response sets stay fast.

Configuring the settings when creating a survey

On Survey Create, choose Response lifecycle. A short note under the dropdown explains the effect of your choice and updates as you change it. If you choose Simple completion, a Completion method dropdown appears with its own explanatory note. Choosing Review workflow hides the Completion method, because it does not apply.

Defaults are Simple completion and Automatically after required answers, which match how surveys behaved before this feature existed.

Configuring the settings in Survey Builder before responses exist

The same two dropdowns appear in the survey-level settings area of Survey Builder, and you can change them freely while the survey has no responses.

As soon as the survey receives its first response the two settings become read-only. The saved values are still displayed, along with an explanation of why they are locked. This protects your data: lifecycle settings are not copied onto each response, so changing them later would silently reinterpret responses you have already collected.

If you need a different lifecycle after collection has started, create a new survey.