Import your survey draft from a Word document, including previously downloaded aytm survey drafts. You can modify the questions and answers but keep the markup so the system can interpret the survey draft. This is great for survey translations and sharing surveys between aytm accounts.
Creating a Survey Draft
To create a survey draft offline, begin by downloading a blank survey template.
- Select Custom Survey in the Dashboard to create a blank survey.
- In the Survey Editor, click the Sharing arrow to the right of the Quick Preview button.
- Check the boxes next to Include [aytm Logic markup], Include order details, and Comments to include those in your download.
- Click the dropdown menu to select either Word doc or PDF, and select Download. Open the blank survey template and fill in the questions, sub-questions, and answer choices. Ensure structural markups accurately reflect question types, delineations for sub-questions, and answer sets.
- After making all necessary changes, save the survey draft to your hard drive and prepare to upload your draft to the platform.
💡 Tip: Download this annotated platform template to assist you in creating your survey draft.
Uploading a Draft
Once you've finished editing and saving the survey draft:
- Click the gear icon at the top right of the Survey Editor.
- Click Upload draft.
- Select the correct file from your hard drive — your survey will populate within a few minutes.
Structure Markups
Survey drafts must contain aytm's survey structure markups, including the question type, delineations for sub-questions or answer sets, and other markups to help interpret the survey structure.
For surveys with images, if you want to upload the same image from a download, you'll need the image ID.
⚠️ Note: If you add a new image, you can add it to the platform directly after uploading the draft.
Programming a Translation
Once a survey has been programmed in the Researcher Language (by default English, or the first language on the Target Market page), you can begin programming other languages.
- Click the Languages button in the upper right corner of the Survey Editor, or above any question, to open the Language table. From this page you can manually type the translation or streamline the process by uploading a translated CSV.
- Click Download CSV to download a CSV of the current state. This CSV will contain a column for the survey schema, a column with any logic used throughout the survey, a column for the researcher language (pre-filled), and an empty column for your translation.
- Make edits or send the file to your translator, with clear instructions to leave the logic column intact.
- Click Upload CSV on the Translation Table to upload the updated version into the platform after completing and saving the translation.
- Make any additional changes to the translation directly in the appropriate column of the translation table once the CSV is uploaded.
⚠️ Note: aytm recommends saving the updated CSV file as CSV UTF-8. Any edits made to the English or researcher language column will replace the existing text. To edit the Researcher Language, click the X to return to the Survey Editor.
Multi-Country Projects
When fielding a project to multiple countries, each country requires a separate survey. We recommend programming a survey draft to act as the English master file — this also helps with merging surveys after they complete.
While translations via CSV are preferred (see linked article), doc draft uploads are available as well. After programming the English version, download the Word draft, translate the survey text, and upload the translated document into a new survey. This is useful when you want to translate the results to English when the surveys complete. It's important to keep the survey drafts identical (the original English and any translated versions) for the later merge. Once the surveys have completed fielding, reach out to your account manager to begin the merging process.
If you're working on a multi-country study and would like us to manage the project for you, email support@aytm.com to discuss.
Transferring a Survey Draft
If you want to share a survey with someone and don't have seats on the same team account, you can download the survey draft as a Word document, and they can use the Draft Upload feature to upload it to their account.
Make sure to review and preview the uploaded survey carefully after uploading and before launching.