Skip to main content
Chat with us

Search

What can we help you with?

Virtual Questions: Hashtag Logic

Hashtag logic lets you group answer options while you build your survey, so your analysis is ready the moment data comes in. Tag related options—for example, products from the same brand or the same product category—and aytm turns each set of tags into a ready-made Virtual Question preset on your Results page.

Learn more about Virtual Questions in the Lighthouse Academy!

Lighthouse Academy: Virtual Questions lightning lesson

In This Article

Before You Begin

The Hashtag group preset is only built when both of these are true:

  • The question has 6 or more answer options. This is a requirement, not a recommendation—on a question with 5 or fewer options, no preset appears, whatever tags you add.
  • The question type supports it. Supported types are single choice, multiple choice, matrix (single-select, multi-select, scale-select and multi-punch), ranking, Shelf Test (with or without fixtures), Ecommerce and Menu questions. MaxDiff, polarity, brand perceptual map, quadrant and matrix scale questions are not supported, and tags on them are ignored.

Adding Hashtag Logic

  1. Fill in all of the question's answer options.
  2. Click into the text field of an option you want to group.
  3. Enter the tag in square brackets, for example [#ShinyGlow]. Once you type #, the editor suggests tags you have already used.
  4. Repeat for every option you want in a group. Options that share the same tag form one group.

In this example, the tags ShinyGlow, Purelocks, SilkyWave, CleanTress and FreshFusion have been added to the products within those brands.

Answer options in the survey editor tagged with brand hashtags such as [#ShinyGlow] and [#Purelocks]

💡 Tip: Hashtags are for your analysis only. Respondents never see them, and they don’t change how the survey behaves.

Hashtag Naming Rules

A hashtag must follow aytm Logic syntax. If it doesn’t, the answer option shows a logic error, just like any other invalid logic.

Rule Valid Not valid
Starts with a letter [#Line2024] [#2024Line]
Letters, numbers and underscores only [#Shiny_Glow] [#Shiny-Glow], [#P&G], [#Café]
No spaces [#ShinyGlow] [#Shiny Glow]
Logic words are fine [#show], [#and], [#hide] —

⚠️ Note: An option with an invalid hashtag is left out of its group. Instead, it appears as its own row in the preset. Fix any logic errors before you analyze your results.

Using Hashtag Groups in Optional Presets

  1. Open a Virtual Question on your Results page.
  2. Click the Optional Presets drop-down.
  3. Under Hashtag group:, select the question you tagged. Each entry reads Q<number>: followed by the question text, shortened to 50 characters.
  4. Review the Virtual Question’s answer options. Each row is one hashtag group: the question filtered to the tagged options (for example, Q3A1 or Q3A4), labeled with the tag name.
  5. (Optional) Rename the row labels. Labels use the tag in lower case without the #, so [#ShinyGlow] becomes shinyglow.

Optional Presets drop-down showing a question listed under Hashtag group 

How Hashtag Groups Behave

Situation What happens
Untagged options Not dropped. Each one becomes its own row, listed after the hashtag groups in its original order.
Upper and lower case Tags are not case-sensitive. [#ShinyGlow] and [#shinyglow] form one group.
Invalid tag The option shows a logic error and is left out of the group—it appears as its own row.
One option, two tags An option tagged [#ShinyGlow] [#Premium] goes into both groups. The rows overlap and won’t add up to 100%.
Same tag in several questions Groups are always built per question and never combined across questions. Each tagged question gets its own entry under Hashtag group:.
Matrix questions Tagged answer columns give one entry per row (sub-question), labeled Q<number>SQ<number>. Tagged rows give a single entry for the whole question.