Website Surveys

1. In the header toolbar, you will see four action buttons:
• Insert Field: Fields are used to collect constituent data. We pre-populate some fields (name fields, address fields, subscriber fields, etc.), and some are created within each office depending on what constituent information you want to store. Use this dropdown to select an existing field in your system to add to the survey. Click this button and you will see a popup where you can choose the field you wish to insert from the dropdown box. Once you have chosen the one you would like to use, click Insert. *The most common fields are address and phone number. They already exist in Fireside. The popup will stay open and you can continue to insert existing fields. Once complete, hit close.

• New Field: Use this to create a new field (question) to add to your survey. Fields are used to capture constituent information. A field can collect information for a question ("What is the most important issue to you?") or to collect constituent data ("What county do you live in?"). Learn about the different field types here.
• ***Field Name NEEDS to be something informative and unique to that survey such as IssueSurvey2011Q1 (This text is not displayed on the form.). This is the only way you can track those who respond to your survey.
• For every survey, you should create a hidden (see step 3 below) yes/no field named after the title or date of the survey. This field should have a default value of true (see step 4 below). This will make it very easy for you to create an audience later that captures all survey respondents. Note: If your survey already has a custom, required field/question, this is not required. 

• Layout: Decide if you want a one-column layout or two-column layout. The one-column layout has the question title and response options on top of one another. The two-column layout has the question to the left of the response options.

• Destinations: Decide if the form should submit to Fireside, a staffer email address, or both.  If the email will submit to Fireside, the email address on the form will automatically become required. Survey results can only be used to create target audiences if the form submits to Fireside. We highly recommend that all form submissions submit to Fireside.

Once Inserted:

1. Change the order of the fields (questions) by selecting the gray cross arrow image on the far left of each survey item and dragging to a new location.
2. Determine if any of the fields should be required or hidden. Hidden fields can be used to automatically opt people in to your email newsletter upon survey submission, but a disclaimer should be added to the footer text section. Required allows you to pull people who took the survey into an audience based on custom fields.
3. Determine if a default value should be provided for any of the fields. Example: If you are creating an RSVP form, the default value may be "true" for whether they are RSVPing for the event.
4. If you want any of your text-type fields to have multiple lines available for users (like a comment box), select the "Edit field" link below the field and type a number for how many rows you want the text box to display on your site. All text fields have a 1000-character limit.

1. All changes you have made to the survey are automatically saved. When you have completed all edits, simply click the blue "Back" button to return to the previous page. 
2. If your form is set up to submit to a staffer email address, test the form to verify that the appropriate staffer receives an email with the submission.
3. To publish your form, click on the "Not Published" button (the button will refresh to say Published and turn green in color) to make the link live. You can now distribute the link through email or on your website. Notice the difference between the preview link and the link you should distribute to your constituents.

***THE LINK MUST BE PUBLISHED BEFORE USING IT ON NEWSLETTERS/WEBSITES/EMAILS

• Example preview link:
•  http://MEMBERNAME.house.gov/Forms/Form/?ID=1375&Preview=true
• Example link to distribute:
• http://MEMBERNAME.house.gov/Forms/Form/?ID=1375

Finally, if you will want to correspond with people who filled out this survey or who filled out a specific survey response, you will need to create an audience.