Stop Collecting Responses on a Survey

GetFeedback lets you close a survey or limit the time a survey is available to collect responses. We have a few options to accomplish this if you’d like to limit the response collection period for just one respondent, several respondents, or for everyone that will receive your survey.

Within the GetFeedback application, it's easy to turn off survey response collection immediately, or by scheduling an end date in the future for the survey to close.

How you will close your survey will depend on how you are distributing your survey. You may be able to instantly close or schedule an end date directly within the GetFeedback survey builder, or you can use the special gf_expire merge field we’ve created, to add expiration details to just one, or all of your surveys that you will send out. We’ll run through each of these options below.

Close a Survey Distributed With a Web Link

Navigate to the Distribute tab of the survey and click on the Link option.This is where you'll find the unique URL for your survey, and where you can schedule a survey end date.

To immediately stop collecting responses, switch the toggle next to This link is collecting responses to Off.

You'll see the date and time that response collection has been turned off:

Schedule Your Survey to Close at a Later Date

If you'd like to schedule a date in the future for your survey to stop collecting responses, you can make this change by navigating to Distribute > Link and selecting the “Schedule an end date” option, picking a date from the calendar popup, and then pressing “save.” This will set the survey to close at midnight on the day you choose by default, or you can customize the closure date by clicking the clock icon underneath the calendar. This will close the survey at the time specified in the time zone that you are in, so you don’t need to do any time zone conversions.

Please note: Disabling the survey from the Link page will not close the survey if it has been distributed with methods other than sending a link.Read on to learn how you can turn off surveys distributed from Salesforce, Web Overlay surveys, or other GetFeedback distribution options.

Use a Merge Field to Close Your Survey at a Later Date

Navigate to Distribute > Link, copy the live link to your survey from the Link page.

Then add the gf_expire merge field to the end of it. You can include gf_expire as a merge field to indicate a date and time that this individual survey should close. You can use gf_expire to close the survey for an individual recipient who is accessing the survey via the specified link that includes the gf_expire flag, or you can send this link to many survey recipients. You can also add gf_expire as an additional merge field to surveys sent out with our Send from Salesforce, HTML, or Send from Pardot email templates.

Many different formats for expiration date and time should work with gf_expire. When using the gf_expire flag with Salesforce, your syntax should look like this:

SURVEYURL?gf_expire=YYYY-MM-DDTHH:MM:SSZ

In the link above, you’ll see the survey URL followed by ?gf_expire= next you’ll want to include the date in YYYY-MM-DD format, then the letter T denotes that the time component is following, then the time in HH:MM:SS format, followed by the letter Z which represents the time zone (UTC.)

Here’s what your link will look like when you're finished:

https://www.getfeedback.com/r/SURVEYURL?gf_expire=2020-01-01T14:00:00Z

The link above will expire that specific individual’s survey at 2:00PM UTC on January 1, 2020.

If you’re using additional merge fields, you can append them to your survey URL before or after the gf_expire flag, with an ampersand separating them, like so:

https://www.getfeedback.com/r/SURVEYURL?gf_expire=2020-01-01T014:00:00Z&AccountName=GetFeedback

Please note: If you’re using GetFeedback for Salesforce, use the Salesforce datetime formats in your gf_expire flag. Learn more about datetime formats here.

Close a Survey When “Sending to a List”

Before sending your survey via Send To a List, remember to set an end date by clicking Schedule an end date at the bottom of the Send to a List email builder, to the left of the Send button.

Once your date selection has been made, your survey will turn off on that selected date and won't collect any other survey responses. If a survey has been sent without this option selected, please reach out to the GetFeedback support team to close the survey.

Close a Survey “Sent from Salesforce” Using Visualforce

GetFeedback VisualForce email template exports use a different type of survey token than our Send to a List or Link distribution options. You’ll want to include a gf_expire merge field as an Additional Field when you’re building out the merge fields in your Visualforce template builder.

This will pass the expiration date provided as a static value. If you’d like to pull in a date from Salesforce as a merge field, include the Salesforce-ready syntax for the expiration date field in the Merge Field Value spot in the builder. Which might look something like this, depending on your Salesforce setup.

Please note: The GetFeedback Support team can help you to close a survey that has already been sent from Salesforce.

Close a Survey Sent with “Automate in GetFeedback”

To close a survey which is sent through our Automated in GetFeedback using Salesforce system, simply choose how long you would like the survey invitation to remain active when building your survey email template.

Select from the dropdown labeled Length of time for each individual survey link to remain active to choose how long you’d like the survey to collect responses after it is triggered.

If you’d like to expire the survey at a different date in the future than the options available in the dropdown, you’ll follow the instructions provided above for adding gf_expire as an additional merge field to your email template, using the appropriate Salesforce syntax, if pulling in a dynamic Salesforce field instead using a static expiration date.

Close a Web Overlay Survey

Disabling a survey link in the GetFeedback survey builder does not disable an active Web Overlay survey. To stop collecting responses on a Web Overlay survey, navigate to Distribute > Web Overlay. From the GetFeedback Web Overlay page and switch the toggle on the bottom left of the screen next to This website survey is active and will display on your website to Off. The toggle should be grey when set to off, and the label should read This website survey is inactive and will not be displayed on your website when the survey is closed.

What Does a Closed Survey Look Like?

Survey participants attempting to respond to a closed or expired survey will see the following page with a This survey has ended message.

If you have White-labeling turned on for your account (learn about white-labeling here), your closed survey page will match your survey theme, and display the same This survey has ended message.

GetFeedback is not able to offer customization for the messaging on the closed survey page at this time.