The questionnaire is yours. You write the questions; Orion asks them. It receives the full text of your document and is instructed to ask one question at a time, in the document's order and wording. The same path works for any document the script needs to follow: an intake form, a consent form, a price list.
Before you share the number, read Where the answers go and What still interrupts a questionnaire, further down: today those are the two limits that matter most.
What you need
- A WhatsApp number on which Orion serves the public, with the Public role turned on — a service number, or the main number when it is dedicated to Orion. On your personal number the public role stays locked — see Connecting Orion and Your clients.
- The text of the questionnaire, ready to paste.
This chapter covers WhatsApp. On Instagram the script is the same, but the rules that let a questionnaire run to the end do not apply there yet — the third identical answer in a row within ten minutes gets no reply: for now, run it on WhatsApp.
The three steps
All three must be done. If one is missing, Orion does not receive your document.
1. The text lives in a Knowledge item
Public service does not open your library. In Knowledge, create a note and paste the questionnaire text into it. You can also upload a .txt, .md or .csv file: the text of those files is read on upload and shows in the item. PDF and Word files do not have their text read yet and do not reach Orion: open the item, tap ✎ Edit and paste the text into it.
Give the item a clear name, four characters or longer — for example, Intake Form. That is the name the script will call it by.
Number the questions and write each one's answer options in a form Orion recognizes as options: on a line that starts with Options: (Options: never, sometimes, always), in parentheses ((disagree / neutral / agree)), with letters (a) morning b) afternoon c) evening) or one per line, with a dash in front. Other forms are not recognized as options yet — a numbered legend for the scale (1 - Strongly disagree), letters with a full stop (a. morning), Answer with: or Pick one: — so write the options in one of those four. Keep each option to five words and 40 characters at most. That way a person can repeat the same option across several questions without it being taken for repetition (see What still interrupts a questionnaire). If the document has notes for your team (how to read an answer, what to check), write them as notes: Orion is instructed not to read them to the client.
Ask only for what you need. If the questionnaire asks for sensitive data — health, for example — the decision to collect it is yours, and it is up to you to tell the person what the answers are for: write that explanation into the script itself.
2. The item is set to 🌐 Public
Open the item, tap ✎ Edit and, in the Scope row, choose 🌐 Public — the third one, next to 🔒 Personal and 🏢 Organization.
- Public means public. Orion may then use that text with people outside your organization: in public service and in groups that are not internal work. Do not leave an answer key, scoring, internal notes or client data in the item.
- An item linked to a deliverable is never public. The row shows locked on 🏢 Organization (linking a deliverable takes a 🌐 Public item out of public service, and the screen warns you before you save). To publish it, first tap the ✕ next to the deliverable.
3. The script cites the item by its exact name, in quotes
In Orion → Public role, open the number that will run the questionnaire and, under Conversation flow, add a step that cites the item by name, exactly as it appears in Knowledge, in quotes and right after the word "questionnaire", "document" or "form":
When the person says they want to answer, use the questionnaire "Intake Form" and ask without changing the questions.
Each step holds up to 300 characters, and the script up to 12 steps. Save.
Orion then receives the document's full text in every conversation on that number. A script can carry up to three documents, with at most 15,000 characters each and 24,000 in total. Anything beyond the limit, or only mentioned in passing in the script, arrives only as excerpts, depending on the question.
While that step is in the script, it applies to every conversation on that number — including the person who only wants your opening hours: the document travels with every reply, and the CRM gets the fixed line instead of the summary (see What goes to the CRM in that conversation). Survey over? Take the step out of the script: from then on, the conversation of anyone who did not talk to the number during the survey gets the summary in the CRM as before. The conversations that took place during the survey keep the fixed line instead of the summary, because Orion still remembers what the person answered.
Run a test conversation
Before you share the number, write to it from a phone that is not yours and go through to the end of the questionnaire. Your own phone will not do: Orion recognizes your number, the conversation does not go through the same rules as an outsider's, and it can get mixed up with your own conversation with Orion. Check: did it start when it should? Did it ask one question at a time, in order, in your words? Did it show the options? Did it reach the last one?
Orion is instructed to follow the document. That is an instruction, not a guarantee: the test conversation is what tells you whether your script is ready.
What the person sees
They talk to Orion the way they would talk to someone on your team. When the script reaches the questionnaire, Orion is instructed to ask one question at a time, in the document's order and wording, to show that question's options and to wait for the answer before moving on. At the end, it thanks the person and confirms that the answers were received in that conversation.
On the official number Orion understands text: if the person answers with audio or an image, it says so and asks them to write.
Where the answers go
There is no screen yet for you to read or download what each person answered. Public service does not save the document's answers to a spreadsheet or a file, and Orion is instructed never to tell the person that it did.
So today a questionnaire pays off when the value is in the conversation itself: a screening that ends in a booked appointment, a consent form read through step by step. For a survey whose answers you need to read afterwards, wait for the answers screen.
What goes to the CRM in that conversation
The CRM history can be read by other people in the organization, and a questionnaire can be sensitive. So, in a conversation where a document from the script is used, the contact's note and the conversation record carry only a fixed line — "Public service conversation using the document “Intake Form”. What the person answered is not saved to the CRM." — in your Orion's language, and not what the person answered. The contact's details — name, phone number, e-mail and company — are still noted by Orion from the conversation: if the questionnaire asks for one of them, the answer can stay in the CRM as a contact detail. The note of a contact that already existed is not changed, even when Orion recognizes the contact by name alone. This holds for any document cited in the script that reached Orion, a price list included: in those conversations the summary of what the person wanted does not go to the CRM either.
After the step leaves the script, the survey conversations stay without a summary. Orion remembers the whole conversation with each person, including what they answered, and the summary it saves to the CRM covers the whole conversation — so a later summary would carry the answers. A conversation in which the document was used keeps carrying the fixed line instead of the summary, now without the document's name — "Public service conversation using a document from the script. What the person answered is not saved to the CRM." —, also on the following days, and also when you close the item to the public, rename it, or when the same person writes to another number of yours. This holds for everyone who talked to the number while the step was in the script, even just to ask your opening hours. The conversation of anyone who did not talk to the number during that period gets the summary as before.
How many people at once, and how much capacity it uses
Several people can answer at the same time. Whoever is already answering is not held up by the others: each conversation moves at its own pace. What the service number limits is how many people start in the same minute: up to ten new conversations a minute, with waiting places for twenty more — the next minute's ten and the ten after that. Whoever waits does not lose their message and starts within about two minutes at most, in order of arrival. Beyond that, whoever arrives is not served: their message is not kept and they have to write again — the first twenty each hour get a sentence asking them to, the rest get nothing. Inviting a lot of people? Invite them in batches of up to ten people a minute: with more people than that arriving for a few minutes in a row, the waiting places fill up and part of the people you invited are left out, many of them with no notice. See Connecting Orion.
Each person gets up to ten replies a minute. Someone who answers faster than that loses nothing: the message beyond the ten waits until the minute is up and is then answered, and messages sent while Orion is still replying go together into the next reply.
Each person (the same phone) gets up to 120 replies from Orion a day. A questionnaire uses about one reply per question — one with 30 questions uses a little over 30 — so it fits with room to spare. Whoever goes past that — in practice an automated system, or someone redoing the questionnaire several times in one day — gets only a neutral sentence, "We can't reply here at the moment. Please write again later.", and is served again the next day. You get a notice with the contact's name and phone number: if it is a real customer, reply to them yourself.
The final limit is your plan's AI capacity. Each person who answers draws on it, and a questionnaire uses more than an ordinary service conversation, because the whole document travels with every reply. There is no fixed number of questionnaires per day: it depends on the size of the document and on your plan. Watch the meters before inviting many people — they are in Plans, leaving, and glossary.
If your account's AI capacity runs out, Orion stops answering whoever writes to the number, and that person learns nothing about your plan or your limit: they get a neutral sentence, and you are the one who is alerted — see If your account's AI capacity runs out, in Connecting Orion.
Orion does not send the questionnaire out. It runs it with whoever writes to the number. Inviting people is up to you: share the number.
What still interrupts a questionnaire
Public service has protections against automated systems answering each other, and they look for repetition. A questionnaire repeats by nature, so questionnaire answers have a rule of their own. What goes through, and what still interrupts:
- Repeated scores, option letters and "yes" or "no" are fine (8, 8, 8), and so is a score said in words (I'd say 8, 8 for me, 8 out of 10, eight): each one counts as the answer to a question. Scale questions that share the same stem run through to the end.
- A written-out option counts too, when it is written in the document. Agree or sometimes given to several questions in a row each count as an answer, as long as the option is written in the document as in step 1 (capitals, accents and a final period make no difference). Anything that is not one of the document's options stays under the general rule: the same word or phrase three times in a row (maybe, maybe, maybe) gets "I got your message — no need to resend it. If something is missing, tell me what changed and I'll pick it up from there.", and the questionnaire only moves on when the person answers another way (on the main number, when all three arrive within ten minutes, the third one gets no reply and the conversation starts over from scratch). Write every option you accept into the document.
- Similar phrases in a row. Someone who answers several questions in a row with nearly identical phrases (I quite agree with that statement, three times) gets that same sentence as a warning, once, and the conversation carries on from where it was, with the answers already given. If three more similar answers come in the half hour after the warning, Orion stops answering that person for 15 minutes, the conversation starts over from scratch, and you get an alert about a possible loop with an automated responder. Short answers — a number, a letter, or the option as it is written in the document — avoid this.
- The same question repeated several times in a row. If the person sends ? or I didn't understand and Orion repeats the question, the conversation carries on — also when they ask a second time. But if the same question goes out four times in a row (three requests one after the other, for example; on the first question of the questionnaire three may be enough), the next answer is taken for a loop: Orion stops answering that person for 15 minutes and you get the same alert. The answers already given are not lost: once the 15 minutes are up, the conversation picks up where it stopped.
- Fast writers do not lose messages: messages wait their turn and are answered in order. Someone who sends the same answer again while waiting may end up with an answer in the wrong place: a repeat that arrives a little after the next question goes out, before the person has seen it, counts as the answer to it. To avoid it, ask in your invitation that people wait for the next question before writing again. See Connecting Orion.
- You replying in the middle. If the number is also on your WhatsApp Business app and you reply to that person there, Orion stops in that conversation for 6 hours — see Connecting Orion.
When the document does not arrive
If the script cites the document as in the example — the name in quotes, right after "document", "file", "questionnaire", "form" or "spreadsheet" — and its text does not arrive (one of the three steps is missing), Orion is instructed not to make up the questions and to tell the person it will confirm that part. Quotes alone, without one of those words right before them, do not turn that instruction on; neither does a name without quotes. The alert you get is the usual one, about the conversation: it does not say which document was missing. Questions written in the script itself keep working as they are.
The limits, in one list
- The answers are not kept for you to read yet: not on a screen, not in a spreadsheet, not in the CRM, which keeps the fixed line and the contact's details (name, phone number, e-mail and company) — even when one of them came from an answer.
- An instruction, not a guarantee: test before you share the number, from a phone that is not yours.
- Text in the item only: a pasted note or a .txt, .md or .csv file. PDF and Word, not yet.
- Up to three documents per script, 15,000 characters each and 24,000 in total; item name of four characters or more.
- While the step is in the script, every conversation on that number carries the document and goes to the CRM with the fixed line instead of the summary (the contact's details are still noted) — and those conversations stay that way after the step leaves.
- The same question repeated several times in a row, similar phrases in a row and a written-out option that is not in the document can still interrupt the conversation.
- Pace and limit per person: up to ten replies a minute (the one beyond that waits until the minute is up) and 120 a day per person (after that, only the next day).
- How many people arrive: on a service number, up to ten new conversations a minute, with waiting places for twenty more; beyond that, whoever arrives is not served and has to write again. Invite people in batches of up to ten a minute.
- Answers sent as audio or images are not understood on the official number.
- When AI capacity runs out, whoever writes gets a neutral sentence and you are alerted.
- An item linked to a deliverable is never public.
- WhatsApp for now: on Instagram a repeated answer still interrupts the questionnaire.