Questionnaire structure

A questionnaire is a hierarchy of up to four levels:

Questionnaire → Steps → Tabs → Questions
                        (Sections group questions visually)

Every upper level is optional. You can build:

• a single-page form — just questions, no steps or tabs;
• a tabbed form — tabs at the top level, no steps;
• a stepped form — steps containing questions directly, no tabs;
• the full wizard — steps containing tabs containing questions.

Respondents see one screen at a time — a (step, tab) pair — with Next and Back between screens. The step indicator only appears when there are at least two steps, and the tab rail only when the current step has at least two tabs, so a simple form gets simple chrome.

Building the structure

The workspace (open any questionnaire from the list) shows a stepper row on top, a tab rail on the left when tabs exist, and the question canvas in the middle.

• Add step / Add tab buttons create containers; new ones get default titles (Step 2, Tab 3) you rename via each item’s ⋮ menu (Rename turns the title into an inline text field — commit with Enter or by clicking away).
• Reordering is via the ⋮ menus (Move left/right for steps, Move up/down for tabs) and the arrow buttons that appear when hovering a question. There is no drag-and-drop.
• Deleting a step or tab shows an impact summary first — how many tabs and questions go with it, and which rules elsewhere reference the questions inside. See Question codes for what happens to those rules.

One shape at a time

A questionnaire uses steps, or top-level tabs, or direct questions — not a mix at the same level, and a step holds tabs or questions, not both. The editor enforces this contextually: buttons that would create an illegal mix are disabled with a tooltip explaining what to change (for example, “This questionnaire uses top-level tabs. Remove them to use steps.”). You never have to know the rule in advance — the UI tells you.

Sections are labels, not containers

A section is not a structural level you create and manage. Each question has an optional Section field; consecutive questions sharing the same section title render inside one card with that heading. Give three questions in a row the section “About you” and they share a card; a question with a different (or empty) title starts a new card.

Because sections are derived from consecutive titles, the editor inserts a newly added question next to the last question of the same section rather than at the end of the screen — so adding to an existing section doesn’t split it. You can still split sections deliberately by moving questions.

Sections have no rules of their own — visibility and requirement rules live on steps, tabs, and questions.

Question widths

Each question is Default, Half, or Full width. The canvas (and the embed) lay questions out on a two-column grid: Full spans both columns, Half takes one, and on narrow screens everything except Half stacks to full width.

Practical limits

There’s no fixed cap on steps, tabs, questions, or options. The one hard limit is the definition’s serialized size — 1 MB — which a very large questionnaire could reach; the editor surfaces the server’s error if so.