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Combining of surveys can be useful if:
You have a continually running survey (sometimes called a Tracker survey), for example the same survey that is sent out every month for a year. This survey may include small changes each time it is sent out to tailor it to changing circumstances etc, and you may handle that, and the management of sample for each "wave" of the survey by setting up a new survey for each month. You can then combine the data from the 12 surveys to see developments over the year.
You are running a VoC program for a large international company. Perhaps there are small differences in the surveys sent out in the various countries to account for local customs and conditions, and may be different people managing the different surveys, so that it is most practical to set up individual surveys for each country. Again, the data from all the surveys can be gathered together for overall reporting.
You have a solution like Employee Pulse where several surveys have been created from the same template and you want to bring them together for reporting to look at totals across all surveys, compare, look at trends etc.
You would like to look at several different surveys and compare some key metrics such as for example overall satisfaction (OSAT) or Net Promoter Score™ [1] in the same table or chart.
You would for example like to compare how employees and customers answer if you have two surveys that have asked the same questions to the two groups.
There are two ways of combining surveys in SmartHub:
Automapped Combined Surveys will automatically include all surveys in a hub matching a specified keyword, map them against the survey schema of a dedicated survey that is used to define what questions the combined dataset should consist of, and then load all matching questions into a combined survey data set, including questions inside loops. Automapped combined surveys can be used when surveys have been created from the same template, or by copying a previous survey, and where the user take precautions to not reuse question ids or answer codes for different questions and answers. There are no limits on the number of fields and surveys in a hub that can be included in an automapped combined survey.
Manually Mapped Combined Surveys can also do an automatical mapping based on a set of rules (Mapping Rules), but also allow mapping questions that have different question ids, and answers that have different codes (Manual Mapping).
Note: Loops and questions in loops are not supported in manually mapped combined surveys, but they are in automapped surveys. “Loop reference” answer lists used in questions on the top level are supported in both. In manually mapped surveys, questions using loop reference answer lists may be mapped if the loop reference is to a loop with the same content (same answer list or lookup table).
Note: For manually mapped combined surveys, the number of surveys times number of fields should not exceed 5000 fields. No such limitation exist for automapped combined surveys.
For reporting, regardless of whether it is an automapped or manually mapped combined survey, the combined survey will function as one survey irrespective of how many surveys have been combined. The report will include a variable that holds which survey the specific records have come from, so you can for example create filters or banners based on which survey the responses are from.