Desktop User Guides > Author > Using the Question and Routing panes
 
Using the Question and Routing panes
Two important concepts of survey creation are routing and questions.
Routing
Routing is the flow of the survey, or the order in which the survey items are displayed to the respondent.
In UNICOM Intelligence Author, this flow is displayed as a linear progression in the Routings pane. The Routing pane contains which questions to display, and any logic to be interpreted and acted upon.
Questions
Questions, also known as metadata, are the structure and details of the survey questions.
Questions might contain responses, styles, formatting and other properties. In UNICOM Intelligence Author, this information is accessible from the Questions pane. The Questions pane does not contain any logic: the logic is stored in the routing.
You can show or hide the Questions pane by using the View menu.
If questions are created from the Routing pane (in other words, when the Routing pane is displayed), they are automatically added to the Questions collection.
Using the Routing and Questions panes
When creating surveys, consider the following implications as they relate to routing and questions:
When creating a single deployed solution, for example, only web surveys, use only the Routing pane.
When creating multi-deployed solutions, for example, a web version and a telephone version, use both the Routing pane and the Questions pane. Build questions in the Questions pane, and then drag them to the appropriate Routing pane as needed.
When both the Routing pane and the Question pane are visible, you should be aware of which pane is active when you build content. For example, if the Questions pane is active, any content that you create is not added to the logic path in the routing.
Deleting a question from the Routings pane removes it from only the logic.
To delete a question from the survey and underlying variables, delete it from the Questions pane.
To delete a question from both the Routings pane and the Questions pane, press Shift+Delete.
The order of questions in the Questions pane is the same order in which they appear in any exported data or analysis.