Concept: Testing Rule-Based Onboarding and Exit Surveys
Context
While standard test rounds allow you to preview the look and feel of engagement question sets, testing Onboarding and Exit surveys that use rule-based targeting requires a different approach. Because test rounds do not fully execute audience enrollment rules, you must use a proxy testing method to verify the end-to-end participant experience and survey logic before launching to your organization.
Best Practices Pre-Launch Testing
To see a complete, end-to-end representation of an onboarding or exit survey with targeting rules enabled, apply these testing configurations:
Create a Dedicated Test Schedule
- Set up a separate, temporary survey schedule specifically for testing your onboarding or exit question sets.
- Deactivate email notifications on this test schedule if you prefer to review the experience purely via internal test accounts without triggering broad mailings.
Use Test Employee Records as Proxies
- Add a small group of internal test employee records or use sandbox profiles to act as proxies for the testing phase.
- Manually update the attributes on these test profiles to trigger your targeting rules. Example: To test an onboarding survey rule set for"Tenure = 30 days", temporarily adjust a test employee's hire date attribute to exactly 30 days in the past.
Trigger Manual Round Launches
- Instead of waiting for automated rules to run on their standard cadence, execute a manual sync or force a round launch on your test schedule to verify the delivery.
- Review how the survey displays across different channels (such as web browsers or mobile applications) using the unique tokens generated for your proxy test records.
Limitations
- Standard test surveys don’t validate audience rules or track separation and onboarding lifecycle changes in real time.
- If not using a test instance, you must clean up or remove dummy test data and reset adjusted employee attributes prior to launching the production survey schedule to ensure benchmark accuracy.