A crucial component of creating new questions in Eventsforce is considering how the question and answer data will be managed. Questions and answers can be set up two ways:

The settings for how to manage questions and answers becomes "locked" once the question is saved. It is important to understand how the questions and answers will be managed prior to creating your question. See "Troubleshooting" below for more information.

If you are running multiple events in Eventsforce, you may only want the questions and answers to be associated with a single event. Alternatively, you may want to create a library of questions that you can reuse in many events, with answers only applying to one event or applied across multiple events. If answers are applied across multiple events, these answers will pre-populate onto the registration form when someone registers (applies to 'email' and 'username' identifiers only).

This article will explain the four options below, their possible combinations, and troubleshooting:

Questions that are made "available to this event only" will be available only in the event they are added to. If the same question needs to be used in another event, the question must be re-added from scratch. 

This setting is best used for questions that involve items that will only appear in a single event.

Example: "Arrival time on Thursday, September 6th?". This question is very specific to a single event, and is unlikely to be used in future events.

Questions that are made "available to all events" will be available to add in any event created in Eventsforce. The question can be found by searching existing database items when adding a registration question, bookable item, or quantity bookable item.

This setting is best used for questions that are likely to be asked in many events in your account, and where the answer alternatives are unlikely to change.

When a question applies to more than one event, changes you make to the answer alternatives will apply to all events using that question. You will see a message explaining the impact your changes will have:

Example: "How did you hear about the conference?". This question is common enough to be used in various events. The answer alternatives are unlikely to be different across events.

Answers that are made "available to this event only" will allow attendees to provide a different answer to this question for every event.

This setting is best used when the same question is asked in multiple events, but the attendee's answer will be different each time.

The question "How did you hear about the conference?" is a good example. The question may be used in more than one event, but the answers should "apply to this event only", as the attendee may have a different reference for each event. 

Example: In event A, the attendee answers "Email communication" for the "How did you hear about the conference?" question. In event B, attendee answers "Sales person" for the "How did you hear about the conference?" question. The same question is used in both events, but a different answer exists for each event.

Answers that are made "available to all events" will only allow a single answer to the question across the entire database for a specific person record. Answers that apply to all events are currently used against questions like "firstname" and "lastname", as the attendee is likely to have the same first name and last name for every event they register for. If they change their first name in one event, this value also changes across all other events in your account. This helps to ensure that "Robert" does not appear as "Bob" in some events, while appearing as "Robert" in others.

Example: "What is your Passport number?. This question should be updated across the entire system to ensure the most relevant information appears, regardless of which event you are viewing.

There are three possible combinations of settings that can be used:

If you select the wrong setting for your question and save, the setting will become "locked" within the question editor. If the question has not been answered by attendees or used in any other events, you can adjust the question settings from the system settings menu:

Note: If a checkbox is greyed out (cannot be selected/deselected), hover over to get more information as to why.

If a question with the same name has already been created in another event, you cannot deselect "Question applies to a specific event".

If the question applies to a specific event, you cannot deselect "Data applies to a specific event", you must first deselect "Question applies to a specific event", save, then deselect "Data applies to a specific event".