Configuring Developer sentiment surveys

Configuring a Developer sentiment survey lets you determine the audience and schedule of your quarterly survey. This survey is based on the Developer thriving research done by the Developer Success Lab at Pluralsight. It is designed to help you understand and improve the health, culture, and outcomes of your organization.

You can only schedule a single survey per organization per quarter, so make sure to coordinate your survey configuration to include all teams who would like to participate.

All users receive the same survey, and survey results can be separated by team. Learn more about Developer sentiment surveys to understand how to view results.

Permissions

• Manage Survey Configuration: You need this permission to configure the Developer sentiment survey.
• Manage Slack Integration: You need this permission to configure the Slack integration so you can enable slack notifications for your survey, if your organization does not already have a Slack integration enabled.

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Before you begin

Before you configure and schedule your survey, there are some initial steps you should take:

• Get familiar with the survey.
• Talk with your team about the goals and scope of this survey.
• Decide who you want to take the survey and when the best time to schedule it is.
• Review your team memberships in Flow
  

  Tip: Where possible, only have users be members of one team so survey results are most accurate.

• Make sure all users who you want to take the survey have access to log in to Flow.

Important: You can only schedule one survey per calendar quarter. If a survey has already started in a quarter, you cannot schedule another one to start until the next quarter. If there is already a survey scheduled for a quarter that has not started and you need to create a new one, either edit or remove the previously scheduled survey before proceeding. Make sure your teams are on the same page with when an organization-wide survey should be scheduled.

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Reading the survey table

Use the survey table to understand what surveys have been scheduled. This table includes data about all previous and completed surveys as well as any that are in progress or have been scheduled to start.

• The Survey name is in the format [Month-Month:Year:DevThriving] where the months are the months of the calendar quarter the survey is scheduled to start in, and the year is the year the survey starts in.
• The Status indicates the current status of the survey. Possible statuses include: Scheduled, In progress, Done.
• Responses is the proportion of the total number of users eligible to take the survey who have completed it. For scheduled surveys, this number will always be zero.
• Team is the list of individual teams selected for the survey. If the survey is sent to the whole organization, this will say All Teams.
• Creator is the Flow user who configured and scheduled the survey.
• Survey start is the configured start date and time of the survey, in the specified time zone.
• Survey end is the end date and time of the survey in the specified time zone. This is set automatically once the Survey start is configured. It will normally be exactly 14 days after Survey start.
• Slack indicates whether the survey is configured to send notifications via Slack.
• Link is a copiable link to the survey. This link will not work until the survey starts.
• Use the three dots menu to delete the survey if it has not already started. You will be prompted to confirm the deletion.

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Adding a new survey

To configure a new survey, click Add new survey.

1. Review the resources provided about the survey, anonymity, results, and delivery. Understanding these will help you best configure and share the survey to meet your needs.
2. Determine your Teams selection. By default, the survey is sent to all users in the organization, with the ability to view results by team. We strongly recommend sending the survey to the whole organization since only a single survey can be configured per quarter. However, if you'd prefer to send the survey to only a small subset of teams:
   1. Toggle on Enable individual team selection.
   2. Use the search box to select teams.
   3. Once teams are selected, toggle off Include nested teams if desired.
3. Click Next once all team selections are finished.
4. Determine the survey open date. Your survey must start during a quarter that does not contain an already-scheduled survey. If you try to schedule a survey during an unavailable quarter, you will receive an error message and be unable to proceed until updating the date. Click Next.
   

   Note: The survey will be open for 10 full weekdays (Monday–Friday) and cannot end on a weekend day. Usually this means the survey will end 14 days after the start date, but if the start date is on a Saturday or Sunday, it will end the second Friday after it starts, meaning it will be open for 12 or 13 days.

5. If you have a Slack integration configured, decide whether to enable Slack notifications for the survey, If you enable automated survey delivery via Slack, choose which Slack channels you want the survey delivered to when it starts. When these notifications are enabled, a single Slack message containing a link to the survey and details about when the survey is open will be sent to the selected Slack channels when the survey starts. You do not need to enable this to proceed with the survey. Click Next.
6. Confirm your configurations and make any changes as needed, When all configurations are set, click Confirm survey selections to schedule the survey.
7. Copy the link to the survey if you want to send it manually. You can also copy this link later from the survey table.

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Editing a scheduled survey

You cannot edit a scheduled survey, other than to delete it. If you've scheduled a survey and you wish to change any of the configurations, you must delete the survey and recreate it.

To delete the survey, click the three dots menu then click Delete. When prompted for confirmation, click Delete survey.

Adding users to a scheduled survey

The list of users who can take the survey is determined at the time the survey is scheduled. If anything changes about your users, including their ability to log in, their team membership, or their existence in Flow, you must recreate the survey for those changes to take effect.

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Preparing your team for the survey

After you schedule the survey, take some time to prepare your team. Let them know what it will be like to take the survey as well as what results are available from it.

Also share the resources from the Developer Success Lab and their Developer thriving work to help your users understand the purpose and context of this survey.

• Developer Success Lab introduction video (opens in new tab)
• Developer Success Lab website (opens in new tab)
• Thriving blobs (opens in new tab), based on the Developer thriving research
• Developer thriving white paper (opens in new tab) and research paper (opens in new tab)
• Developer Success Lab's peer-reviewed scientific publication (opens in new tab) presenting the empirical evidence behind the Developer Thriving and its connection to developer productivity, published in IEEE Software

To help you share with your team, try sending this message, adjusted so it fits the needs of your organization: