Event or survey, which to use? – Lyyti

This feature can be used with the following license packs: Basic, Professional, Enterprise

Every now and then we get questions on whether to use an event or a survey for a specific type of survey. It depends a bit and I will get more into that in a moment, but here are the main differences between an event and a survey:

Feature	Event	Survey
All Lyyti-languages	x	x
Anonymisation tools	x
Answer option capacities	x
Collecting attachments	x
Conditioning questions	x	x
Confirmation message	x
Copying questions	x
Customisable link	x
Data protection questions	x
Editing answers after answering	x

Excel report of answers	x	x
Graphs of answers		x
Layout and design change	x	x
Messaging participant	x
Online report	x	x
Participant types	x
Participant: Anonymous answer	x	x
Participant: Personal answer	x	x
Password protection of page	x	x
Password protection of report	x	x
Quantity-question	x
Reminding non-reacted participants	x
Restricting answering time	x	x
Scale of values question type		x
Standard questions	x
Training reporting use of answer info	x

Questions where the answer YES that might lead you to using an event:

Do I need to collect contact information and/or anonymise them later?
Does the participant/person need to receive a confirmation message or do they need to be able to edit their responses later?
Do I need to customise the link to the questions?
Do I need to use standard questions, a quantity question, or the attachment question to gather attachments from participants?
Do I need to set a capacity to the event, or to an answer option?

If the answer to any of these is yes, consider an event. You can delete all unnecessary questions and info from an event and there is no need to send a confirmation if you don't want to.

Questions where the answer YES that might lead you to using the survey:

Do I need graphs of the answers?
Do I need a scale of value-question and a graph of those answers with percentages?
Do I need to quickly create a survey?

If the answer to any of these is yes, you need a survey, or at least I wouldn't create it as an event. It's faster to create a survey if it's to be answered anonymously and doesn't need to send a confirmation message, you should go with the survey tool. It is a quick and easy way to get your answers and you get graphs of the answers.

In any other cases you can decide, both work, just a bit differently.
When in doubt, give us a call :) We'll help you out!

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