Feature Update - Managing Your Response Data

Up to now, when you’ve needed to remove data from a survey that you want to keep, you’ve had two options- clearing all the data, or deleting individual responses. The first option is somewhat indiscriminate, and the second can be time-consuming.

To help our users manage data more easily, we’ve launched a new feature for our paid plans, so users can have more control over data clearing. Find out more by reading on.

One of the requirements for data collection under GDPR is that data should not be kept for longer than is necessary to perform the purpose for which it was gathered. Now, while that is a somewhat loose definition, it means that your collected data should have a lifespan, even if what that lifespan should be isn’t mandated.

The implication for SmartSurvey users is that responses should not be kept for longer than is needed, and this can be awkward at times to achieve. It’s always been possible to identify responses older than a given date and then delete them, by using a filter to show certain individual responses and then deleting them one by one. However, we wanted to add something better for our users, so we have.

Introducing additional options for clearing your survey responses.

The clearing responses feature now makes the process of clearing multiple, but not all, responses from a survey much easier.

By choosing the option to manage which responses are cleared, you’ll be able to do the following:

• Choose to clear partial responses.
• Choose to clear completed responses.
• Choose a date range for which to clear responses, or before/after a given date.
• Choose to clear responses collected via a specific tracking link.

These options combined give great flexibility over what responses you want to clear and covers the most common usage we’ve been asked for by users, which is to clear responses collected more than a certain time ago (as defined by the date specified).

Clearing based on tracking link makes it easy to set your survey up so that traffic from different sources can be selectively cleared.

These features are live now for all our users on paid (non-legacy) plans. To find out more about how to use them, then check out our comprehensive help guide.

If you’re currently on a basic or legacy plan, then you’ll need to upgrade to one of our current paid plans to get the benefit of this new feature.