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Set a campaign's rules and availability

Purpose​

Decide what each assessment in a campaign looks like before anything happens, write the rules that change it, and publish the result to everyone on the roster.

Who this is for​

Account administrators and campaign managers.

Before you start​

  • A campaign with at least one assessment in it. See Publish and preview an assessment.
  • Permission to change campaigns. Reading the rules needs the campaign view permission; saving or publishing needs the campaign modify permission.

Where it is​

Open the campaign and choose the Rules tab. It shows one row per assessment in the campaign, and a form at the bottom for adding a rule.

Two badges at the top say where the campaign stands: Draft vN is the version you are editing, and Published vN is what participants are currently being shown. If the two differ you also see Unpublished changes — your edits are saved, but nobody is seeing them yet. A campaign that has never been published says Never published.

Put an assessment into the structure​

A campaign that has never had rules starts with an empty structure, so every row reads Not in the structure. Choose Add to the structure on a row and the assessment joins it, keeping the default availability its own settings already carry — so adding a campaign that has been running for months changes nothing about who has to do what.

Only assessments in the structure can carry rules or be named by one.

Set what people see by default​

Default availability on each row is what a participant is shown before any rule fires:

  • Mandatory — it counts towards being finished.
  • Optional — offered, never chased.
  • Hidden — shown only when a rule says so.

Each change is saved as you make it. The row also shows who answers the assessment — each participant, one per organisation, or one per group — and says whether that came from the campaign's structure or from the assessment's own settings. Change who answers in the assessment itself, not here.

Add a rule​

A rule reads: when this answer in the source assessment meets a condition, the target assessment changes. The form builds the underlying rule for you; ordinary rules do not require expression syntax.

  1. Choose the source assessment — the one whose answers are read.
  2. Search the source's pinned questionnaire and choose a question or result. The list shows each item's title, stored name and type, grouped by its page or panel. Matrix rows and multiple-text items appear as their own choices.
  3. Choose an operator and, where needed, an answer. Choice questions show the questionnaire's answer labels while saving their stable values; number and rating questions use numeric comparisons.
  4. To test more than one answer, choose Add condition, then decide whether all conditions (AND) or any condition (OR) must match.
  5. Choose what happens to the target: becomes mandatory, becomes optional or becomes hidden.
  6. Choose the target assessment — the one that changes.
  7. Choose Add rule.

The source must have a pinned questionnaire. If it does not, the form says so rather than showing an empty question list. Activate the assessment to pin its questionnaire before building the rule.

Each rule appears under the assessment it changes as a sentence using the assessment, question and answer labels, with Edit condition and Remove controls. Re-opening a guided rule restores its conditions. Use Custom expression only for an existing or specialist SurveyJS expression that the guided editor cannot represent; the platform keeps such expressions unchanged and shows their stored text with the rule.

Rules are evaluated when the source is finalised, over the answers of the participant's unit. Until then the target shows as locked rather than absent.

What the platform refuses, and where it says so​

Every change is checked as it is saved, and a refused change is not stored — it stays on screen with the reason beside the thing that caused it, so you can fix it or remove it. A banner at the top says that nothing was saved. The reasons are the platform's own, each with a code you can quote in a support request. The common ones:

  • AVAILABILITY_CYCLE — the rules chase each other in a loop, so no assessment could ever be resolved. Shown against every rule on the loop; break one of them.
  • CONDITION_NAME_UNRESOLVED — the expression names a question the source assessment's questionnaire does not have. Names are checked against the version the campaign is pinned to, not against whatever the template says today.
  • CONDITION_UNPARSEABLE — the expression is not valid.
  • UNIT_CONTAINMENT — the source is answered by a narrower group than the target, so the answer it reads cannot speak for everyone the rule would change. An organisation-level assessment may gate a participant-level one; the reverse is refused.

Publish stays switched off while anything is flagged. That is deliberate: a structure the platform refuses to store is not a structure it can apply.

Publish​

Choose Publish. The published version number is set to the draft you published, and the panel reports how many people's availability actually moved.

If somebody else changed the same campaign while you were editing, the save or the publish is refused with a version conflict and a Reload the rules button. Reload, look at what changed, and redo your edit — nothing is overwritten silently.

Telling people about new assessments​

After a publish that introduced assessments to a running campaign, the panel asks whether to announce them, and Open the announcement takes you to the Engagement tab where the message is previewed and sent. Nothing is ever mailed by publishing.

An assessment that was published before, taken out and put back is listed separately as restored, and is never offered for an announcement — the people on the roster were told about it the first time.

Limits and gotchas​

  • The panel writes availability and rules. Who answers an assessment, and the group that names a unit, are set on the assessment itself.
  • Rules read answers only. Labels on the roster cannot be used in an expression yet.
  • Removing an assessment from a campaign does not remove its node; the panel will show the platform's warning about a node whose assessment is gone.
  • This is the minimal panel. The Campaign Builder draws the same structure as boxes and arrows and applies exactly these rules — Open the builder is beside Publish.