Breaking Changes in Live Surveys

What Happens When Your Survey Breaks?
Changes That Can Break Your Web Survey
How to Fix a Broken Survey
Preventiing Breaking Changes in Web Campaigns

A breaking change happens when you make a major revision to a web survey (a Web Button, Campaign, or Widget) after you’ve saved it the first time. These big changes disrupt the way your survey collects and organizes responses, which ultimately stops your data from being sent to Insights.

Big changes can prevent your survey from collecting and processing responses, stopping that data from getting to Insights.

What Happens When Your Survey Breaks?

A breaking change completely interrupts your data flow. When a survey breaks, you’ll notice these problems:

Your form stops sending new data to Insights.
New responses you collect may not be saved or processed.
Your form might disappear from your workspace.
Your dashboards and reports may stop updating.

Changes That Can Break Your Web Survey

These specific edits can cause your web form to break:

Reusing a question name for a different question type: For example, you had a radio button named "selection," deleted it, and then added a checkbox but used the same name, "selection."
Changing the number of options in a choice question: For example, you replace a checkbox that had 3 options with a new checkbox that has the same name but now has 5 options.
Adding a choice questions (radio button, dropdown, or checkbox)
1. Only 1 option
2. Duplicate option names
3. No options at all
Creating forms with no actual questions: A survey that only contains headings or descriptive text will break and stop sending data.
Setting an impossible scale for rating or matrix questions: Using a scale of less than 2 or more than 10.
Directly changing the element's unique ID: This is only possible with In-Page widgets.

How to Fix a Broken Survey

Once a survey is broken, you cannot restore it to start sending data to Insights again.

However, the quickest solution is to create a new, fixed version:

Duplicate the broken form or campaign.
Make the necessary changes in the new copy.
Add the new version to your workspace.

This will ensure that all your new responses are collected and sent correctly going forward.Safe Changes (Non-Breaking)

You can confidently make the following updates without any risk to your data collection:

Adding new questions with unique names.
Removing questions.
Editing text (like question labels, options, titles, or descriptions).
Changing the order of questions.
Making a question required.
Adjusting the survey design or theme.
Updating targeting criteria.
Changing show/hide logic or jump logic.
Changing scheduling options.
Changing security or privacy settings.
Renaming your form or campaign.

Preventiing Breaking Changes in Web Campaigns

for Web Campaigns, GetFeedback now has new safeguards that help keep your Web Campaigns healthy and your Insights data flowing without interruption.

When editing a Web Campaign:

The system now checks for possible breaking changes before you save.
If risky changes are found, a warning banner will pop up.
The system will automatically prevent most breaking changes. For a few exceptions (like choice questions with one option or polar questions), we recommend you use a radio button with simple "Yes" and "No" options instead.
If your campaign is already broken, you’ll be notified immediately and guided on how to recreate it without losing data.

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Breaking Changes in Live Surveys

What Happens When Your Survey Breaks?

Changes That Can Break Your Web Survey

How to Fix a Broken Survey

Preventiing Breaking Changes in Web Campaigns

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