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Publishing and your first responses

Building a survey does not make it reachable. Getting from a finished draft to a first response takes four steps: publish the survey, add a distributor, activate it, then share the link. The third step is the one people miss most often — a new distributor starts as a draft and collects nothing until you activate it.

This page walks the whole chain and shows how to tell, at a glance, which step you are on.

Before you start

Section titled “Before you start”

Your survey needs at least one question. A survey with no questions cannot be published. Everything else on this page works on every plan, including Free — web links, QR codes and social sharing are not gated by tier. Email campaigns need Solo or above.

1. Publish the survey

Section titled “1. Publish the survey”

Publishing takes a snapshot of your draft and makes it the live version. Until you publish, your survey exists only as a draft that you can see and respondents cannot.

  1. Open the survey in the builder.
  2. Publish it. You will see a confirmation that the survey was published.
  3. If publishing is refused, the message names what to fix. See Troubleshooting below.

Editing a published survey does not change what respondents see. Your edits go into a new draft, and you publish again when you want them live. If you try to publish without having changed anything, SurveyRock tells you there are no changes to publish rather than creating an identical version.

2. Add a distributor

Section titled “2. Add a distributor”

A distributor is a specific way in — a link, a QR code, an email campaign, an embed. Publishing does not create one for you, and this is the first place people get stuck: the survey is live, but there is still no way to reach it.

Open the survey’s Distribute area and add a distributor. The channels are:

  • Web Link — a shareable URL. The simplest option and the right default.
  • QR Code — generated for a distributor, for print or in-person use.
  • Email Campaign — send invitations and reminders from SurveyRock and track opens and completions (Solo and above).
  • Embed — a snippet that puts the survey inside a page on your own site.
  • Social & Web — share a distributor link straight to social platforms.
  • Slack and Microsoft Teams — post into a channel or DM (Team and above).

You can run several at once. A web link and an email campaign side by side are tracked separately in your results, so you can see which one brought which responses.

3. Activate the distributor

Section titled “3. Activate the distributor”

New distributors are created as drafts. A draft distributor exists, has a URL, and collects nothing. In your distributor list it shows a Draft status with the note “Activate to start collecting” underneath.

Activate it. The status changes to Active, and from that moment the link accepts responses.

If you would rather it open later, schedule it instead — the status shows as Scheduled with the start time, and it activates itself when that time arrives. Scheduling is available on Team and above.

Section titled “4. Share the link”

Copy the distributor’s URL and send it wherever your respondents are. For an email campaign, SurveyRock sends it for you. For an embed, paste the snippet into your page.

Responses appear in Results as they arrive, broken down by distributor.

How to tell which step you are on

Section titled “How to tell which step you are on”

Each status answers a different question, and reading them saves guessing:

What you see What it means What to do
No distributors listed The survey may be published, but nothing points at it Step 2 — add one
Draft — Activate to start collecting The distributor exists and is closed Step 3 — activate it
Active Open and accepting responses Share the link
Scheduled Will open at the time shown Nothing — or bring the time forward
Expired The close date has passed Reschedule or create a new distributor
Active, but no responses The link is working; nobody has used it yet Check who received it, and test it yourself

Example

Section titled “Example”

You are running a post-purchase satisfaction survey for a client.

You build six questions, publish, and add a Web Link so you can put it in your own newsletter. Because you want the responses to start on Monday rather than the moment you finish, you add a second distributor — an Email Campaign to the client’s contact list — and schedule it for Monday morning.

On Friday your distributor list reads: web link Draft, email campaign Scheduled. Neither is collecting, and that is correct — but the web link will stay silent forever unless you activate it. You activate it, drop the URL into the newsletter, and leave the campaign to open on its own.

Monday’s results show responses arriving under both, counted separately, so you can tell the newsletter’s contribution from the client list’s.

Troubleshooting

Section titled “Troubleshooting”

“Survey must have at least one question to publish.” Add a question. Display text and page breaks on their own are not questions.

Publishing is refused because of survey logic. Skip logic, display logic or branching is pointing at a question that no longer exists — usually one that was deleted or moved after the rule was written. The message names the rule. Open it, repoint or delete it, and publish again.

Publishing is refused because of question piping. Piping — pulling an earlier answer into a later question — needs a plan that includes it. Either remove the piping or upgrade, then publish.

The link opens but says the survey is not available. The distributor is not Active. Check the status: a Draft has never been opened, a Paused one was closed by hand, and an Expired one passed its close date.

“Survey must be published before distribution.” You are trying to activate a distributor on a survey that has never been published. Publish first, then come back.

Everything is Active and responses still are not arriving. Open the link yourself, in a private browser window, and complete the survey. It is the fastest way to separate “the survey is not reachable” from “nobody has answered yet,” and a test response is easy to filter out later. If your distributor has password protection or an IP restriction on it, check those first — both silently turn away respondents who would otherwise start.

Your edits are not showing to respondents. Editing creates a new draft; the published version is unchanged until you publish again.

What’s next

Section titled “What’s next”