Creating Duplicate Survey Names

Why can we not create duplicate Survey names. I want the same survey in 2 different folders but I am unable to name them the same.

Is this a configuration issue or a limitation in the application?

I also saw a post from someone saying that the survey names cannot be the same... Why not? They are assigned unique IDs... I can think of a lot of reasons why you would want to name a survey the same name.

My case I have a library for surveys. I create a survey that includes a subset of items in that library one survey, but it is the same name. I want to have different survey folders that distiquish the groups of surveys. These surveys are for different time periods for different events (which are grouped by survey folder) so the Response items might be slightly different depending on the needs of the event.

[pwiesner]

Not allowing surveys with duplicate names was a design decision. When duplicate names were allowed the support team found that they frequently encountered issues where customers had accidentally edited/deleted/etc the wrong survey. I will create a tracker item for your request to limit this restriction to folders.

As a note of clarity the survey name is only ever displayed to survey editors. Respondents are shown a separate value, the survey title, which does not have a unique constraint. You can edit the survey title on the survey's Style page.

Ok I can see your point, but that would be a training issue. I still think because of the nautre of this application you should be able to have duplicate survey names. I understand you had to make design decision but in my case it does not work. Maybe make this a configuration setting. You can allow or disallow duplicate survey names. In my opinion that should have been the way checkbox should have gone with this issue.

Limiting it to just folders would solve my problem but I will not see that for a while. I am trying to integrate checkbox with another application right now. :-(.

Your solution with using the survey title would not work in my case. I (with the use of checkbox api) get a listing of surveys for a particular event. I use the survey names to dynamically populate a tab. The user clicks the tab to view the response data for that survey. So the survey name will have a shortened name for users to see in the system. The survey title will have a user freindly name for repondants when filling out the survey.

Also does ResponseTemplateManager.GetAvailableResponseTempla tes return surevy title? My first thought I don't think so, I might have to get it though another API.

[pwiesner]

Thank you for the additional information. I simply mentioned survey titles because in the past when customers have been upset about the inability to have surveys with duplicate names it has been because they thought it impacted the name respondents would see. Now that I have a more detailed explanation of your situation this information is not particularly pertinent.

It is not the most elegant solution but if you are in a time crunch I believe you can simply edit the survey title directly in the database. As you previously mentioned the product uses unique ids to reference surveys. That being said I would strongly suggest that you test this first on a backup database in order to ensure that there are no unintended consequences. Also it is worth noting that our upcoming Survey Management web service has the functionality to retrieve a survey by name. Having duplicate survey names will result in this method functioning incorrectly.