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Creating surveys

Building a survey, screen by screen

The two-modal create flow from the Slack App Home: title, description, anonymity, questions, then audience, schedule, reminders, and link sharing.

Updated

Building a survey takes two short modals. The first is Create Survey where you write the questions. The second is Share Survey where you pick the audience and (optionally) put it on a schedule. A few minutes end to end, faster the second time.

Open the create modal

From the Surveys App Home tab in Slack, click Create a survey. The Create Survey modal opens.

Title and description

Give the survey a short, recognisable title. “Weekly Retrospective” or “Q2 Engagement Pulse” reads better than “Survey 17.” The title shows up at the top of the Slack invite and on the dashboard.

The description is optional, but worth writing. It appears under the title on the invite message and inside the respond modal. Use it to explain why the survey exists and what you will do with the answers. If you plan to invite participants from outside your workspace through a share link, include a way to reach you in the description so they know who is asking.

Decide on anonymity

Below the description, the Make this survey anonymous checkbox applies to the whole survey. With it on, no name is attached to any answer and you cannot follow up on individual responses.

The toggle is locked once you publish (when you click Share Survey or Schedule Survey on the second modal). You cannot flip it after responses come in. When in doubt, leave it off. You can always run the survey again with anonymity on later. You cannot retroactively make a non-anonymous survey anonymous.

Add the questions

Click Add Question, pick a type, write the question, and submit. The six question types are:

  • Free text for nuance.
  • Select for a forced choice between options.
  • Multi-select for picking a set from options.
  • NPS (0 to 10) for sentiment at scale.
  • Yes/No for clear gates.
  • Agree/Disagree (5-point) for sentiment with direction.

Mix any of them in a single survey. Aim for a survey the team can finish in two minutes. Three to seven questions is a comfortable shape for a recurring pulse; longer surveys still work but should be reserved for the questions that genuinely need them.

You can edit or delete a question from its overflow menu (the three dots) on the question row.

Move to Share Survey

Once you have a title and at least one question, click Next: Share Survey at the bottom. The Share Survey modal opens.

Pick the audience

The Share Survey modal has two pickers.

Select Users sends the survey as a direct message to each person you pick. Use it when you have a specific list of people in mind.

Select Channels posts the survey invite in the channels you pick. Anyone in the channel can respond. For private channels, Surveys needs to be invited first; the modal warns you with the exact /invite command to run.

You can use both pickers together. For channels, you also get a Delivery option: post one message in the channel, or fan the survey out as a direct message to every channel member. The DM-fan-out shows a live count of how many people will receive it.

Set the schedule

The Repeat select at the top of the Share Survey modal controls recurrence:

  • Does not repeat: a one-shot. Posts immediately when you submit.
  • Weekdays (Mon to Fri): every weekday at the time you pick.
  • Specific days of the week: pick any combination.
  • Monthly: pick a day of the month. Months with fewer days post on the last day.
  • Quarterly: every three months on a chosen anchor date.

The time of day uses your local Slack timezone automatically. Pick from 15-minute slots.

For recurring surveys, you can pick a First send date (the cycle anchor; required for quarterly, optional for the weekday-based and monthly cadences) and an End date (optional, the recurrence runs forever otherwise).

If you picked specific users (or chose DM-fan-out for channels), you can set a Send reminder offset. Surveys then sends a follow-up DM to anyone who hasn’t responded after the offset (1 hour, 2 hours, 4 hours, 1 day, or 2 days).

For one-shot non-recurring surveys, Link Sharing lets you generate a share link in three modes: disabled, internal (only your workspace can respond), or global (anyone with the link can respond). Recurring surveys don’t expose this; the audience comes only from the pickers.

Submit

Click Share Survey (one-shot) or Schedule Survey (recurring) at the bottom. The Surveys invite goes out, you land on a confirmation modal with a “Create another survey” button, and the results dashboard starts collecting responses the moment the first answer arrives.

What happens next

Channel members see the invite the next time they open the channel and click Respond to open the survey in a Slack modal. Direct-message recipients get a DM with the same Respond button. Responses stream into the dashboard as they come in. Recurring surveys keep separate result sets per run, grouped together so you can compare week to week or month to month.

For recurring surveys, you can pause, resume, edit the schedule, or end the series anytime from the App Home tab.