Create and edit questions

There are many ways of collecting information from Families in Avela - and different ways in which you can configure questions to enable powerful workflows.

How do I create a question?

1. Once you have created a section that is either Pre-ranking, or General category, you'll see a button to "Add question" below it. The placement of this button is indicative of where this question will be created in - so be cautious of which one you're clicking as your form becomes more robust and contains more sections.

2. Name your question, and select the question type. Learn more about question types and what each of them lets you configure.

3. Adding a question key is optional, but helpful if you'd like very granular control of which fields Staff should be able to edit depending on the Team they're in. Learn more about Teams. It is also very helpful for integrations. Learn more about Data services.
Keys should be descriptive of the field they represent, and must not contain spaces nor special symbols.

4. Turn on or off certain settings, depending on how you'd like for this question to work:

• Required. Making a question required will prevent families from progressing onto the next section of the form until they have filled the field in. It will also prevent staff from saving incomplete sections.

• Internal only. Making a question internal only will hide the question from families and allow staff with certain Roles to view and answer the questions. Learn more about Roles.
  • • “admin”: Only admin can update and view admin-only questions.
    • "org-admin": Only admin and organization admin can update and view org-admin questions
    • “district-admin”: Only admin, organization admin, and district admin can update and view district-admin questions
    • "school-admin": Only admin, organization admin, district admin, and school admin can update and view school-admin questions.

• Has verification. Enables the question to be a part of a verification in the form, allowing it to be set to pending, verified or rejected. More than one question can belong to the same verification, effectively grouping questions in the form. The verification label can take any value - it can be income, birthdate, custody, etc. and there is no need to append the word “verification” or “check” etc. to the label since all labels are clustered together under Verifications: in the portal and have the word appended to them on form details. Learn more about verifications.

• Has link. This configuration simply adds a hyperlink after the question to provide the parent with more info.

• Conditionally reveal. This allows questions to become visible after another question's answer, or only when certain schools have been selected by the family. This is useful if your organization has schools that need to collect specific information but not every school needs the same data, or if you'd like to make the form as brief as possible for families, and only ask for additional information when they meet a certain criteria. Learn more about conditional questions. 

Eligibility in questions

Certain question types allow you to configure eligibility - allowing you to limit the kinds of schools or institutions a family sees, based on their answers to those questions. For example:

•  Address question type: Allows you to set up eligibility based on location boundaries that you previously set up. See more about creating boundaries.

• Grades question type: Allows you to set up eligibility based on grade and date of birth, that you can configure in the question.

• Learn more about eligibility in Apply

How do I edit a question?

1. Once you've created a question, you'll see it listed within the section it was created in - and it will have a button to Edit, as well as Delete it (as long as it's not been published)

2. Click Edit question to modify its contents and settings. If the question has been published, you may be able to configure fewer things than when you first created it, this is because the question is live and visible to people already. Don't forget to save your changes, by clicking "Update question"

Can I delete a question?

Questions, as well as sections, can only be deleted before they are published. You'll see an option to delete a question as soon as you save a newly created question, before publishing the changes to your form. Learn more about removing questions.