Building Your First Report¶

Once responses start coming in, staring at a table of raw answers isn't how you'll actually make a decision from them - you need charts, comparisons, and eventually something you can put in front of a stakeholder who wasn't in the room when the survey was designed. That's what Reporting is for: a report is a live, editable collection of charts built directly from your survey's results, ready to share as a link or exported as a deck.

Creating a Report¶

From inside a survey, open Reporting and choose Create Report. A new report starts empty - there's no forced template or starter layout, so what you build reflects the questions you actually care about, not a generic set of charts Opionate guessed you'd want.

Adding Your First Widget¶

A report is made of widgets - individual charts, each bound to one question or one comparison. Adding one is a three-part decision:

1. What data. Pick the question (or questions, for a comparison) the widget should draw from.
2. What kind of comparison. A single question on its own, or a cross-tab against a second question - see our companion guide, Cross-Tabs and Combined Survey Analysis, for when to reach for a cross-tab instead of a single-question view.
3. What chart type. Bar, column, line, doughnut, and several others are available; not every chart type fits every kind of data, so the picker only offers the ones that make sense for what you've selected. See Choosing the Right Widget for Your Report for guidance on which to pick.

Once added, a widget updates automatically as new responses come in - there's no separate "refresh" step to remember.

Arranging a Report¶

Widgets can be reordered and resized on the report canvas, so you can put the headline finding first and supporting detail below it, the same way you'd lay out slides in a deck. This layout is exactly what carries over when you export to PowerPoint later, so it's worth spending a minute on before you share anything.

Titles, Notes, and Context¶

Each widget can carry its own title, and a report as a whole can carry a name and description - useful context for anyone opening a shared link cold, without having sat in on the survey design conversation.

What's Next¶

A report you've built is ready for two more things: sharing it as a live link (see Sharing a Report Publicly) and exporting it as an editable PowerPoint deck (see Exporting Your Report to PowerPoint) - both work from the same report, so you don't have to rebuild anything to go from "working view" to "something I hand to leadership."

FAQ¶

Do I need to finish my survey before building a report?
No - a report reads whatever responses exist at the time you view it, so you can start building the layout early and watch it fill in as responses arrive.

Can I have more than one report for the same survey?
Yes - there's no limit. A common pattern is one working report you iterate on internally and a second, cleaner one built specifically for sharing.

Does building a report cost credits?
No - Reporting itself is free to use. Credits apply to specific AI-driven actions elsewhere in the product (see What Actually Consumes Your Credits (and What Doesn't)), not to building or viewing reports.

Can I delete or start over on a widget?
Yes - any widget can be edited or removed at any time, and doing so never affects your underlying survey responses.

Ready to go further? Read Choosing the Right Widget for Your Report next, or jump straight to Cross-Tabs and Combined Survey Analysis if you already know you need to compare two questions against each other.