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Configurable survey layouts for use on different devices

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02-19-2026 04:45 AM
Status: Open
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CatherineCoe
by
Emerging Contributor

Within our organisation, we are often asked to create complex public-facing surveys using Survey123 Connect. As such, our surveys need to be viewable and understandable across multiple device types, e.g. smartphones, tablets and desktops.

Within the current constraints of Survey123, we can only design for one device at a time and just have to hope that it looks okay on other devices. In the case of this survey, we purchased tablets especially for our advisors to use in the field and so we designed this survey to best fit the tablet screen. Now, we are being asked to launch this survey to the wider public who will have to use their smartphones. The problem is, the tablet layout does not work well on smartphones - it looks squashed (see screenshots below). But if we redesign the survey for smartphones, it looks untidy and very long on tablets. It is looking like we will have to create two versions of the same survey:

  • One for tablets
  • One for smartphones

We may also have to have a third version of the survey for use on desktops. As surveys published via Connect are not fully supported for editing in Survey123 web, again the layouts we have chosen are sub-optimal for desktop use (not to mention the occasional html tag showing through as text). 

This will create further problems for us down the line when we want to view all the data, having three surveys, three feature layers and three automated report templates. 

In an ideal world, we could configure our survey layout and style for each device, within a single survey. For example:

  • On tablets: keep the dynamic grid layout
  • On smartphones: display as single rows (full with of the screen)
  • On desktops: use a mix of both, with options to customise the background of the survey. 

Having a single place to manage how your survey looks across devices would be amazing and would transform the way we work. It would also reduce our credit cost (no longer having to support multiple versions of the same survey and would make analysing the results so much easier.

Please consider voting for this idea if you agree!