Why clone consultations?
If you run repeat consultations such as staff surveys or citizens’ panels, you can clone a survey in its entirety and just update the details that have changed, such as the dates. This allows for easy comparison of data over time (longitudinal studies) as the data exports will always contain the same questions with the same column headings.
If you have a set of standard questions, pages, or descriptive text that you would like to include in all surveys, you can make a ‘template’ consultation just containing this default information, and leave most of the consultation record blank. You (or other members of your department) can then clone this template as the basis for subsequent consultations.
When you clone a consultation, you are cloning the Consultation Details, and the Survey content – so in the case of an Online Survey, the questions and answer components. The copy will not include any of the responses, results, outcomes or ‘We Asked, You Said, We Did’ data from the old consultation.
Who can clone consultations?
Consultations can be cloned by anyone who can see the consultation’s dashboard and has permission to create consultations, which means:
Individual Admins in the same department as the consultation (even if they are not the original owner)
Department Admins in the same department as the consultation
Site Admins
Analysts cannot clone consultations. Individual and Department Admins cannot clone consultations in other departments. See our article about types of internal users for more information.
How do I clone a consultation?
Existing consultations can be cloned in any state – forthcoming, open, closed or draft. A cloned consultation will always begin life in the draft state, to give you a chance to update the details before publishing it.
Go to the Consultation Dashboard of the survey you would like to clone, and select “Clone this Consultation”
This will take you to a page where you can select the title and URL for the new consultation. If you are a Site Administrator, then you will also be able to choose which department the new consultation will be created in, from the drop-down list:
Once you’ve selected “Clone Consultation”, the consultation will be cloned! The next page you’ll see will be a summary, listing the differences between the original and cloned consultation, with a link to continue to the new consultation.
What are the differences between the original and new consultations?
Regardless of the state of the original consultation, some details are default for the new consultation:
- The user who clones a consultation will be the owner of the new consultation
- The new consultation will not be private
- The new consultation will be in draft state
- The new consultation will not be set as ‘featured’ on the consultation hub
- The new consultation will have no mailing list entries
- The new consultation will have no online survey responses
- The new consultation will have no analysts assigned to it
- The new consultation will have the URL and Title set when it was created.
- All other details about the new consultation will be the same as the original.