Feature Spotlight: Piping 101

This Feature Spotlight illustrates the basics of piping. Piping is a smart way to arrange your survey and make it more efficient for the respondent. Piping enables you to carry text from one question to another, depending on the options selected by the respondent. The best part is that it is available both online and on mobile. Keep reading to learn more about piping, when it is appropriate to use, and how to set it up.

Piping enables you to carry text from one question to another, depending on the options selected by the respondent. For example, if a survey respondent indicates that they visited Yellowstone National Park, piping allows you to grab that text and then ask further questions on the next page about their visit to Yellowstone National Park.

Piping can be applied to a number of different scenarios. It can be used as a follow-up question to an answer that was selected, it can show answers picked within a survey, carry over open-ended answers for follow-up, and text based on selected answers or even open-ended texts. Please remember that for piping to work correctly, the text can only be carried over to the next immediate page.

Setting up piping in your survey is simple. First go to Edit Survey, then click on Add/ Update Logic, and then select Branch/ Skip Logic. From here you can enter the piping text and update the branching information. In the destination question, use ${piping_text} wherever you would like the piped text to show up. Next assign the custom var# and use ${custom#}. Finally, remember to add a page break at the end of all this so the next page will show up properly.

Here you can see what the destination question will look like. You have the ability to edit the row and column choices any way you like. Always remember the key to piping: ${piping_text} followed by ${custom#}. We hope this Feature Spotlight was informational, and if you have any questions do not hesitate to reach out!