What does the word “commenting” mean to you?
To most people living in the age of Google Docs, “comments” are synonymous with “feedback” or even—gasp—“edits.”
In other words, “commenting” is stuff about your work that other people want you to change.
We’re not knocking it. Getting feedback on your work is a great way to improve it (especially when you’re designing surveys), but it doesn’t have to be the only way commenting works. You can also use commenting to spark a conversation and point out something interesting, exciting, or alarming.
With this in mind, we’ve added our popular commenting feature to the survey results page, allowing you to start a conversation about your results directly from the Analyze tab of your survey.
We’re not just talking about chitchat. You can invite anyone to comment on your data, making it easy to show your data to just the right person—and do it fast. Commenting allows your team to stay in the loop on your entire survey, making them a part of not just the survey design but the survey analysis, as well.
Give people the exact data they’re looking for
As survey creators, we’re fascinated by the big picture—we want to see all the results from our survey, dig into them, and learn what they mean.
Our colleagues? Probably less so. As much as you might want to show off all the results your survey netted, it’s probably best to call their attention to a particular data point or area of your survey results.
For example, sometimes you want to get feedback on a specific part of your survey, without spilling all the beans. Or maybe you want to leave out any personally identifiable information when you share.
To do this, use the +SHOW feature to create a view of your results with as many pages (or questions) from your survey as you want. Once you’ve created a view, click Save As, then Shared Data Link to share it with others and invite them to comment. They’ll see the questions and pages you gave them—no more, no less. That’s the basics, but you can read a more detailed description here if you’d like.
Pro tip: If you’re part of a SurveyMonkey Team, your collaborators can request access to more of your survey or even create their own views and filters to dig deeper on their own.
Do teamwork on survey data like a pro
Work together, even if you’re apart: Normally, conversations about your company’s survey results happen in a conference room, over a plate of donuts. While we’d never say no to donuts, arranging time for everyone to be in the same place at the same time isn’t always easy.
It’s much easier to sort through the data at your own leisure, find the points that interest you the most, and use comments start talking about them. From there, your colleagues can take their time to process what you said and come up with their own thoughtful responses to it. Everyone wins, and you can still have a donut while you do it.
Keep track of everything: Even if you do meet up with your colleagues to review your survey results, chances are that you’re still going to want to take notes about what you think the most important parts are. Write your notes as comments and you can keep all the conversations about the survey results in the same place and in the context of the results themselves.
Keep everyone in the loop: Whether it’s via email, Slack, or Microsoft Teams, it’s easy for you or your team members to turn notifications on (or off) to make sure you can stay a part of the conversation (or remove yourself from it). Get notifications when you get a new comment or a reply to a comment you’ve already made.
It should be pretty obvious by now that there are a ton of ways to use commenting beyond getting feedback. Whether it’s starting a conversation about your data, getting the exact right data point in front of the exact right person, or working together better on your survey data—there are way more possibilities than we could write about here. No matter how you use commenting, you’re sure to improve the way you and your team work together on surveys.
