How to deploy a sample form with sample data

The SurveyCTO server console has a special sample form with sample form submissions that you can deploy on your server at any time. This is very useful for testing SurveyCTO features before you have collected any data.

Deploying the sample

Visit the Design table of the server console, and follow these steps to deploy the sample:

1. Under Your forms and datasets, click on Tools.
2. Click on Add example form (the last option).
   
3. Answer Yes to the prompt that appears.
4. If your server has groups, you'll be asked which group to place your sample form in. Pick one, and click OK.
5. After a couple seconds, a popup will confirm the form has been deployed. Click OK.

Great, now what do I do?

We're glad you asked! You can test all sorts of things:

• Edit it in the online form designer on the Design tab by clicking on the Edit button (or by downloading it in Excel format from Download > Form files). It will help you to understand the form's contents.
• Fill out the form using SurveyCTO Collect or web forms. You can also do that with the sample forms that don't come with sample data.
• Test quality assurance features on the Monitor tab like the Data Explorer, review and corrections workflow (skip to 1:30), and automated quality checks.
• The sample data can be published to help test out ideas for dashboards, and integrations with downstream systems (Google Sheets, Zapier, webhooks).
• You can see how data exports work on the Export tab, including our direct to SPSS export, Excel workbook export, and our Stata .do file template.
• You can test out data purging before actually using it on your own forms.

You can do whatever you'd like to this form, even delete it. You'll be able to re-deploy it at any time by following the above steps.

Are there other sample forms?

Yes! The product documentation has a built-in library of sample forms to help you learn. You can deploy these sample forms directly to your server console:

1. Go to the Design tab.
2. If you already have a form, click "+". Otherwise, click Add your first form.
3. Click Start new form.
4. Give the new form a title and a unique ID.
5. Enable the option to Use a sample form as your starting point?
   
6. Choose the sample form you want from the menu that opens.
7. Click Next.
8. Click Edit online to launch the sample form in the online form designer.
9. To collect data with the sample, open the Save menu, and click Save and deploy, so that the form is no longer a draft.

There are even more samples offered by various articles on the Support Center, which will need to be deployed from spreadsheet templates.