Meet SurveyCTO’s AI Assistant: Your personal guide to the platform and ecosystem

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Najin Kim
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Introduction

SurveyCTO is designed to make survey design as intuitive and error-free as possible. With features like customizable field types, built-in field properties, and tools for constraints and relevance, the platform helps ensure efficient workflows and high-quality data collection from the very beginning. 

Note: Data quality describes how well the data collected aligns with the research goals or intended use. High-quality data is characterized by accuracy, relevance, completeness, timeliness, and consistency. Ensuring data quality is crucial because poor data can lead to misleading insights, wasted resources, and flawed decision-making processes. Read more about how to ensure data quality. 

While these tools are powerful, they can sometimes be challenging to fully leverage—especially when working under tight deadlines or navigating complex survey logic.

That’s where the SurveyCTO AI Assistant comes in. Acting as your personal guide to the SurveyCTO platform and ecosystem, the AI Assistant helps you unlock the full potential of SurveyCTO’s powerful tools.
Ask the Assistant questions on a wide range of topics, like the nuances of specific features, differences between subscription tiers, and technical product details. This reduces your need to search manually through the Support Center or SurveyCTO documentation for straightforward answers to your questions–though you should always doublecheck your responses from the AI Assistant with documentation if possible by asking for sources. 

Remember, if you're a trial or paid user, you can always open a support ticket to receive 24/7 human assistance for help with SurveyCTO or even with the AI Assistant!


What can you achieve with the AI Assistant?

The SurveyCTO Assistant is designed to support you across your entire workflow—from form creation and troubleshooting to team setup and platform navigation. Whether you’re new to SurveyCTO or managing a complex project, the Assistant offers practical, conversational support grounded in official SurveyCTO resources.

    • Answer feature-specific questions: Ask how to use a particular field type, feature, or workflow, and the Assistant will explain it using content from SurveyCTO’s documentation, Support Center, and website.
    • Advice on build expressions: Get help understanding relevance, constraints, calculations, or field references. The Assistant can break down what expressions do and how to correct or improve them.
    • Help troubleshoot and debug issues: Paste in form errors, logic problems, and the Assistant will help identify what’s causing the issue and how to fix it.
    • Provide guidance on best practices: Learn how to structure forms efficiently, improve usability, manage multilingual content, and apply recommended naming conventions or design patterns.
    • Assist with account and user management: Ask how to manage roles, permissions, teams, and get step-by-step explanations on configuration.
    • Support exporting and integrations: Learn how to set up automated exports, use the API, publish data between forms, or integrate with tools like Google Sheets or Power BI.
    • Point to trusted resources: Get links to relevant SurveyCTO documentation, Support Center articles, and blog content so you can explore further and deepen your understanding.
    • Support multilingual interactions: You can ask questions and receive answers in your preferred language, making the Assistant accessible to users across regions and teams.


Using SurveyCTO’s AI Assistant for form design

The Assistant is currently in public beta, so while it's a powerful tool, it's still learning and may occasionally provide incorrect information. That said, the more it's used, the more up to date  it becomes on SurveyCTO, making it an increasingly valuable companion for learning, troubleshooting, and improving your workflow.

While the Assistant is capable of supporting many use cases, this article focuses specifically on how it can help you with form design, project setup, and navigating the broader SurveyCTO platform with confidence. Let’s dive in!

The SurveyCTO AI Assistant is a conversational, intelligent large-language model (LLM) tool that supports your work across the platform. Whether you're building complex logic, troubleshooting validation errors, or learning how to use a new feature, the Assistant is available to provide relevant, real-time guidance.

Unlike generic chatbots, the AI Assistant is trained on SurveyCTO’s entire body of official content—including product documentation, Support Center articles, tutorials, and website resources. That means its answers are grounded in trusted information and tailored specifically to SurveyCTO’s features and best practices.

It also provides citations and links to related resources, so you can explore topics further and continue learning as you work. Whether you're a new user or an experienced form designer, the Assistant is here to help streamline your workflow and ensure you're getting the most out of the platform.


How to use the AI Assistant

Note: SurveyCTO's AI Assistant does not retain conversation history. If you reload or leave the page, previous content will no longer be accessible. To ensure you can refer to it later, please remember to copy and save the information separately.

The Assistant is available at any time on SurveyCTO’s website. Using the AI Assistant is straightforward, and you can start right away:

Steps to Get Started

  1. Look for the AI Assistant tab at the bottom-right corner of the SurveyCTO website. Click to open it.



  2. (Optional) Upload your form for AI review by clicking on the paperclip icon:
    The Assistant is designed to read forms–simply upload them using the paperclip icon!

Uploading your form definition in Excel (i.e. .xlsx) format allows the AI Assistant to provide tailored advice and additional benefits, such as:

  • Personalized assistance: Receive recommendations and solutions specific to the structure and content of your form.
  • Detailed reviews: Identify syntax errors, inefficiencies, and opportunities for improvement.
  • Example-based guidance: Get examples directly relevant to your form’s context, making implementation easier.
  • Debugging support: Troubleshoot and resolve specific issues with precise fixes tailored to your form.
  • Enhanced learning: Gain tips and insights directly applicable to your form design, helping you improve your skills for future projects.

  1. Ask questions or seek assistance:

Type your query into the chatbox. Whether or not you’ve uploaded a form, the Assistant can handle a wide range of requests. 

For example:

These requests can also be submitted using natural language—the Assistant uses natural language processing (NLP) to understand and respond to your requests in the way you would normally communicate. 

Also, please make sure to provide as much context as possible. Here are some examples:

  • “Create a question asking what kind of materials are in respondent houses. Also provide a possible choice list for this question.”
  • “I got the following error when I tried to upload my form to the server. What’s the cause of the issue and how can I solve it?”
    Error uploading form: The form definition could not be processed:

XForm Parse Error: XPath Dependency Cycle:


  1. Review and apply suggestions:

The AI Assistant provides actionable feedback that you can use immediately, whether it’s a fix, a recommendation, or an example.

  1. Iterate and refine:

If you need additional information, ask follow-up questions to fine-tune the AI Assistant’s responses. The Assistant is designed to refine its recommendations based on additional context or feedback.


Maximize your use of the SurveyCTO Assistant

The Assistant is designed for conversational engagement. You can ask questions in your own words and follow up to dive deeper into a topic. For example:

“How do I set up repeat groups to collect household data?”
→ Follow-up: “How can I assign unique IDs to each household member?”

This flexibility makes the Assistant useful for solving issues as they arise and for exploring SurveyCTO’s capabilities over time.

Example use cases by topic

Below are examples of how the Assistant can be helpful across different areas of the platform:

Form design and troubleshooting

The Assistant can explain form errors, help you understand complex expressions, and recommend more efficient design approaches.

Example prompts:

  • “What does this relevance condition mean: ${age} > 18 and ${consent} = 'yes'?”
  • “How do I create a scoring system for multiple-choice answers?”

Data collection setup

Whether you're using mobile devices or web forms, the Assistant can help you configure your project for field data collection.

Example prompts:

  • “How do I download a form to SurveyCTO Collect?”
  • “What are the differences between web forms and mobile forms?”
  • “What’s the difference between SurveyCTO’s default offline functionality, and the advanced offline features?”
  • “How do I enable offline data collection for field teams?”

Monitoring and quality control

The Assistant can guide you through setting up workflows to review submissions, flag issues, and monitor performance using dashboards and audit logs.

Example prompts:

  • “How do I flag submissions with unusual GPS coordinates?”
  • “What is the purpose of the audio audit, and how do I use it?”
  • “How can I monitor enumerator activity across teams?”

Server and user management

You can ask the Assistant for help managing users, roles, and access controls across projects and teams.

Example prompts:

  • “How can I give specific users access to data through the API?”
  • “What permissions are included in the data collector role?”
  • “How do I restrict access to sensitive forms?”

Exporting data and integrations

The Assistant provides support for setting up data exports and connecting to external systems like Google Sheets, Dropbox, or the API.

Example prompts:

  • “How do I export submissions to Excel automatically?”
  • “Can I publish data from one form to another?”
  • “How do I use the API to fetch filtered submission data?”

Advanced workflows and customization

For experienced users, the Assistant can help explain features like case management, server datasets, pre-loading data, and field plug-ins.

Example prompts:

  • “What’s the difference between server datasets and CSV pre-loading?”
  • “How do I set up a follow-up workflow for case tracking?”
  • “Can I customize a select_one field?”

Subscription and account management

You can also ask questions about your SurveyCTO subscription, billing, and usage limits.

Example prompts:

  • “How can I check how many submissions I’ve used?”
  • “What happens if I exceed my monthly limit?”
  • “Which plan should I get for my project?”

Using the Assistant to train your team

The SurveyCTO Assistant is also a helpful tool for onboarding and training. New users can use it to explore how the platform works at their own pace. It can explain key concepts like groups, repeats, pre-loading, and more.

Example prompts for training:

  • “What is a group and when should I use one?”
  • “How do I test a form before deployment?”
  • “What are some best practices for designing mobile-friendly surveys?”


Ready to get started?

The AI Assistant is more than just a help tool — it’s your partner in making the most of SurveyCTO. Start asking questions today and move forward with confidence in your data collection journey!

 

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