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In this article

How it Works
Survey Requirements
Adding Advanced Branching
Using Multiple Rules
Conditions & Actions
Managing Existing Rules
Previewing & Testing Rules
Analyzing Your Results
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

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Creating Surveys

Applying Logic

Advanced Branching

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Advanced Branching

How it Works
Survey Requirements
Adding Advanced Branching
Using Multiple Rules
Conditions & Actions
Managing Existing Rules
Previewing & Testing Rules
Analyzing Your Results
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

Use Advanced branching to create personalized, multi-condition paths that show, hide, or skip pages and questions based on your respondent's responses.

How it Works

Best practice Finalize your survey questions and structure first. Then, as your final step, set up Advanced branching. This ensures your logic isn’t updated and saves you from unnecessary rework.

Advanced branching is logic based on Conditions and Actions. Conditions are things like a respondent's answers to a survey question, custom data from Contacts, custom variables, or survey language.

When the criteria defined in your conditions are met, the Action is triggered.

Actions can do things like:

Skip respondents to a future point in your survey, either on the same-page, or to a future page.
Show or hide questions
Show or hide pages
Invalidate questions and customize error messages
Add unconditional skip logic to a page, so that everyone who reaches that page is skipped to a specific page later in the survey.
Redirect a respondent to a URL after they complete all matching questions in the survey.

Example for how you can use Advanced branching
Let’s say you’re surveying customers after a purchase from your site. You can have respondents select only the products they’ve purchased, from a list of options, and then show them follow-up questions relevant to only those products, while hiding the follow-up questions on products they didn’t purchase.
Another way to use the Advanced branching rule builder is to disqualify respondents who answer questions in a certain way or redirect them to a custom URL once they complete all relevant questions in the survey. That way, you can seamlessly send respondents to a disqualification page if their responses aren’t relevant to your survey's goals or show a custom end page once respondents reach the end of the survey, having met all logic rules.

Survey Requirements

Before adding Advanced branching rules, consider what data you can base conditions on, and what collector types you'll need to use for everything to work smoothly.

Data	Description	Compatible Collector Types
Questions	Any question type except Text, Image, Click map, Text A/B test, Question A/B test, and Image A/B test. For questions with multiple rows, you can specify the row you want to base your condition on.	All collector types
Contact data	The custom data about your respondents that's stored in Contacts. For example: Email, First Name, Last Name, Custom 1, etc.	Email invitation
Custom variables	The values of the custom variables in the survey URL.	Web link
Survey language	The language the respondent takes the survey in.	All collector types

Adding Advanced Branching

Image of how to apply multiple rules. Shows advanced branching logic tab that includes two rules and an option to add another. There is an option to choose a page to go to after rules.

To add Advanced branching to your survey:

In the Design Survey section, select the Logic tab.
Select Advanced branching logic.
Select the Page you want to add logic to and select Next.
Click + New rule.
Define the Conditions and Actions for your rule. You can add more rules after you save this one.
Select Save Rule.
Select Apply.

Your rule you applied is shown as a coded script. Hover over the script to see what each coded piece means.

If you want to add additional rules to your page, select + New rule again. Check out the types of rules, order of rules and conflicts when adding multiple rules to a page or full survey.

Same-page Logic

You can add Same-page logic to your survey from the Advanced branching rule builder.

Set up your conditions and actions to either the Show question or Hide question. Same-page logic seamlessly adapts in real-time, as a respondent answers prompts respondents with the appropriate follow-up questions, on the same-page, in real time, potentially limiting the number of page breaks and eliminating unnecessary respondent clicks.

Same-page logic reduces page breaks, so survey takers only see questions relevant to them.

Steps to add Same-page Logic to Your Survey
Within the Advanced branching logic rule builder, you set up same-page logic.
To set up same-page logic:
1. In the Design Survey section, Build your survey.
2. Once your survey is fully drafted, go to the top of your survey page that has the question you want to trigger logic on.
3. Select Page logic at the top of the page.
4. Choose Advanced branching logic.
5. Select + New rule.
6. Select criteria for your Condition and Actions to either Show or Hide future questions when your conditions are met.
  Confirm that your survey doesn’t include same-page logic limitations described in the expand below.
7. Select Save Rule.
8. (Optional): You can add more rules after saving your first.
9. Select Apply.
Same-page logic limitations
There are some incompatible features with same-page logic rules. Check that your survey doesn’t mix the following features with same-page logic:
- Your survey can include A/B Test (Random Assignment), Single textbox, Multiple textboxes, Comment box, File upload, Max diff, Date/Time, Address, Click map, Email address, Name, and Phone question types, but you can’t base your logic Condition on these question types. You can set an Action based on these question types, however.
- One question at a time mode isn’t compatible, use Classic mode if adding same-page logic.
- Question randomization can’t be combined with same-page logic. Both features can be used in your survey, but they can’t be applied to the same questions.
- Advanced piping and Question and answer piping can’t be applied to the question you base Conditions on.
- It isn’t possible to set a Same-page logic condition on contact data or custom variables.
Preview Your Same-page Logic

Using Multiple Rules

Types of Rules

The Advanced branching Logic tab is split into two sections where you can set up the three different types of rules.

Section	Rule Type	Description
Advanced branching rules	Advanced branching Rule	A rule composed of a condition and an action.
Advanced branching rules	Conditional Skip Rule	A rule composed of a condition and a branching action, specifically. Find a full list of actions in the Conditions and Actions section.
If no other skip rules apply, proceed to this page...	Unconditional Skip Rule	An unconditional rule composed of an action only.

Order of Rules and Conflicts
When a respondent submits a page in your survey, all the rules on that page are evaluated in order from top to bottom. If you use multiple types of rules together, the following hierarchy applies:

Advanced branching Rule > Conditional Skip Rule > Unconditional Skip Rule

If two or more rules of the same type conflict with one another, we take action on the first rule in the list, and ignore any subsequent rules that conflict with it.
The exception to this hierarchy is when multiple Redirect to URL at survey end rules are set up. Respondents get sent to the last redirect URL at survey end that the respondent matched.
Using Advanced Branching with Question Skip Logic
While you can use Question Skip Logic and Advanced branching on the same survey, we recommend using Advanced branching exclusively so you can manage all of your logic in one place and better avoid conflicts.
If you do use Advanced branching and Question Skip Logic together, and there's a conflict between the two types of logic, the following hierarchy applies:

Advanced branching Rule > Conditional Skip Rule > Question Skip Logic > Unconditional Skip Rule.

For example, if you have an Advanced branching Rule and Question Skip Logic based on the exact same condition, the Advanced branching Rule takes precedence.

Conditions and Actions

Rules are built like logical sentences based on questions in your survey or information about your respondents. Every rule is made up of two parts—a condition and an action.

You can build rules based on the following subjects. Keep in mind that some subjects will only work when you use a certain collector type to send your survey.

Conditions

Conditions define the fields you want to base the rule on, and how you want us to evaluate those fields. Conditions are made up of three parts:

Part	Description	Example
Subject	The data you want to base the rule on.	Q4: What is your age?
Operator	Tells us how to evaluate the subject's value to make the condition true. You can use several different operators to define the relationship between the subject and the value.	is one of
Value	The value of the subject you're basing the rule on. This could be the answer choice the respondent selected, the open-ended response they type into your survey, or the data that we know about them already from Contacts, Custom Variables, or survey language.	17 or younger 18-20 21-29

Adding Multiple Conditions to a Rule
You can add multiple conditions to a rule and use the Boolean operators OR or AND to define the relationship between the conditions.

Within a single advanced branching rule, you can either use all AND operators, or all OR operators—you can't mix and match.

The NOT Boolean operator is not available.

Actions

Actions define what the survey should do if the conditions are met.

There are two types of actions:

Branching Actions let you skip respondents to a later point in the survey when the conditions of your rule are met.
Other Actions let you show or hide questions and pages, invalidate questions when certain conditions are met, or invalidate questions when certain conditions are met, or redirect to a URL once the respondent completes the full survey.

The table below are all the Actions available with advanced branching:

Rule Type	Action	Description
Branching Action	Skip to page	Skip the respondent to a future page in your survey.
Branching Action	Exit block	Skip the respondent to the next available block, if Block Randomization applied. If a block is not available, the respondent will skip to the next available page.
Branching Action	End survey	Skip the respondent to the Survey End Page option. immediately after fulfilling this condition. Their individual responses status isComplete.
Branching Action	Disqualify respondent	Skip the respondent to the disqualification page that you select in the collector options. Their individual responses survey status is marked Disqualified.
Other Actions	Hide question	Hide a question on a future page in the survey. Questions are shown until the respondent meets the conditions.
Other Actions	Show question	Show a question on the same-page or a future page in the survey. Questions are hidden from the survey until the respondent meets certain conditions.
Other Actions	Hide page	Hide a future page in the survey.
Other Actions	Show page	Show a future page in the survey. Pages are hidden from the survey until the respondent meets certain conditions.
Other Actions	Hide Answer	Hide an answer option of a question on a future page in the survey.
Other Actions	Invalidate question	Invalidate any question on a future page, or the current page, and customize the error message that respondents will see when they try to proceed to the next page of the survey.
Other Actions	Redirect to URL at survey end	Redirect your respondents to various URLs once they complete the rest of your survey. This redirect at survey end logic lets respondents complete any more survey questions or pages, see Instant results, Thank you page, or Disqualification page, and then be redirected to the logic’s redirect. Target Audience, Kiosk, and Website collectors do not support this action. When multiple Redirect to URL at survey end rules are set up in your survey and the respondent interacts with more than one of these rules, then they're redirected to the last-matched redirect URL once they complete the survey. Tip! If you want to immediately end the survey once the respondent triggers the Redirect to URL at survey end, select +Action to add the End survey branching action to your rule.

Managing Existing Rules

To view or edit an existing rule:

In the Design Survey section, select the Logic tab.
Select Advanced branching logic.
Select the page you want to add logic to and select Next.
The Advanced ranching logic tab opens at the top of the selected page.
View or edit the rules. You can hover over the script to see what each coded piece means.
Select the down arrow to the right of any existing rule to edit, duplicate, move up, move down, disable or delete a rule.

You can't copy or move rules to another page in the survey. You need to re-build the rules on the new survey page.

Previewing and Testing Rules

The best way to test Advanced branching depends on the subjects you based your rules on.

When you Preview a survey, use the Survey overview panel to validate your Advanced branching rules alongside your survey preview. Testing is the best way to make sure your logic flows are set up properly.

Testing Rules Based on Questions
Testing Rules Based on Custom Data from Contacts
If any of your conditions are based on custom data from Contacts, the best way to test your survey is to create a group in your Contacts and then send an Email Invitation to that group.

When you create a test group, include email addresses that you have access to for testing. When you add custom data to those contacts, make sure that you have a test contact for each persona you based your advanced branching rules on. For example, if you use the Custom 1 field to record each contact's department, and you base advanced branching rules on multiple departments, make sure to create a test contact that represents each department.

When you compose your invitation message, insert custom data tags into the message so you can refer to the set of custom data you're about to test when you receive the email.

After you're done testing, clear and delete the collector to remove the test data from your survey.
Testing Rules Based on Custom Variables
Testing Rules Based on Survey Language

Analyzing Your Results

Your results in the Analyze Results section will look the same as any normal survey. If a respondent was skipped past a question or page due to a branching action, or if a question was hidden from a respondent, the questions they didn't see are marked as skipped in the Analyze Results section.

There's no way to view or export the logic path that a particular respondent took through your survey.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

Will my rules update if I delete or add more questions and pages?
If you delete pages, questions, or answer choices in your survey, advanced branching rules update automatically so you don't need to go back to update them manually. For example, if one of your rules is based on Q1, and then you add a new question before it that becomes the new Q1, the rule will dynamically update to reference Q2 instead.

However, we recommend waiting to apply advanced branching rules until after your survey design is complete. It's easier to apply logic once the organization of your survey is finalized.
Are values case sensitive?
What's the difference between Advanced Branching and Question Skip Logic?

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Advanced Branching

How it Works

Survey Requirements

Adding Advanced Branching

Same-page Logic

Using Multiple Rules

Conditions and Actions

Managing Existing Rules

Previewing and Testing Rules

Analyzing Your Results

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

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