Threads are real-time, collaborative conversations you can attach to anything in SurveyAnalytica — a survey draft, a live campaign, an automation flow, a specific response, a contact list, a dataset, or an analytics widget. Use threads to review work with teammates, loop in external stakeholders, track open items, and keep a durable audit trail of why a decision was made — right next to the thing the decision is about.

Thread Types

Every thread has a type that sets its tone and default behaviour:

• Conversation — customer-facing discussion (RMA exchanges, support dialogs, follow-up with a respondent).
• Collaboration — internal team conversation for design review, approvals, or campaign sign-off.
• Audit — system-generated trail for compliance and automated logging. Audit threads are written by workflows and rules; people read them rather than posting into them.

Where You Can Start a Thread

Look for the Activity icon in the page header, or the Threads popover next to the main action bar on these screens:

• Survey Designer — ask teammates about a question, discuss a rule
• Survey Responses — flag a single response for review or follow-up
• Cross-Channel Campaigns — discuss subject lines, send windows, approvals
• Flows (Workflow Designer) — debate logic before activation
• Contact Lists & Data — discuss data quality, segmentation, imports
• Analytics & Dashboards — turn an insight into a conversation with context
• Action Center — promote an action item into a full thread

Thread Components

Participants

Threads have two kinds of participants:

• Internal participants are workspace members, referenced by their user account.
• External participants are anyone outside your workspace — customers, vendors, auditors — invited by email. Every external participant has a mandatory expiry date, after which their access ends automatically. External participants see only the specific thread they were invited to, never the wider workspace.

Messages

Messages stream in real time over a WebSocket connection. You can format text, paste links, and reference other entities. Threads preserve every message in order and keep a running count, last-message preview, and last-message timestamp so you can scan the Activity panel quickly.

Linked Entities

A thread can link to more than one entity. A thread started on a response can also link to the campaign that delivered it, the contact who responded, and the workflow that should act on it. These links are first-class — they show up on both sides, so you can jump from thread to entity and back.

Actions

When a thread produces a decision or a to-do, convert it into an Action from the thread header. The action inherits the thread’s context and appears in the Action Center for the assignee, alongside its due date and status.

Visibility

Set visibility when you create the thread; change it any time you have permission:

• Shared — visible to all workspace members and any invited external participants.
• Internal — visible only to admin and agent roles within the workspace. Use this when discussing a response or campaign among staff only.
• Restricted — visible only to explicitly listed participants. Best for sensitive discussions.

Your effective view of the threads list reflects these rules plus your role: organization admins see every thread in the org, workspace admins see threads in their workspace, and other users see threads where they are a participant or where visibility is Shared.

Thread Lifecycle

Threads move through four states:

1. Open — active; accepting new messages.
2. Resolved — closed with a short resolution summary that captures the outcome. Resolved threads can be reopened. The summary can be written by the resolver or generated by the platform based on the discussion.
3. Archived — soft-hidden from default views (manual or automatic). Archived threads are restorable.
4. Closed — permanently closed; no further activity. Use sparingly — Resolved is usually the right choice.

A thread can also have an expireAt date — useful for time-boxed discussions that should automatically wind down.

Creating a Thread

1. Open the entity you want to discuss (a survey, a response, a campaign, a flow, a widget, a contact list).
2. Click the Activity icon in the page header, or the Threads popover if available.
3. Click New Thread.
4. Pick a Type (Conversation / Collaboration / Audit) and Visibility (Shared / Internal / Restricted).
5. Give the thread a short title.
6. Add participants — search for team members, or type email addresses to invite external guests (set an expiry date for each external invitee).
7. Post your first message.

The thread is now linked to the entity you started it from. You can link to additional entities from the thread header at any time.

Inviting External Participants

Type a full email address in the participants field. The invitee will receive a secure link limited to that one thread. Two things to remember:

• External participants must be given an expiry date — after that date they lose access automatically.
• They can read and post in the thread, but cannot see other threads, other entities, or anything outside the thread itself.

Threads as Workflow Triggers

Thread events can kick off automated flows. You can trigger a workflow when:

• A new thread is created on a given entity type
• A message is posted in a thread
• A thread is resolved, archived, or closed
• A participant is added or removed

Pair this with Actions to route the outcome — for example, resolve an RMA thread and automatically send a shipping label, or post to Slack when a customer-facing thread goes 24 hours without a reply.

The Activity Panel

The Activity panel is your home base for threads:

• A compact popover in the header gives you quick access to recent threads from any page.
• A full-page Threads view lists every thread you can see, with filters for type, status, visibility, and participants.
• Per-entity panels (survey, campaign, flow, response, widget) show just the threads linked to that entity.

FAQ

Can I link a single thread to multiple entities? Yes. Use the thread header’s “Link to…” action. A single thread can reference a survey, a response, a contact, and a workflow at the same time.

Can external participants see other threads in my workspace? No. External participants see exactly the thread they were invited to — nothing else.

What happens to a resolved thread? It stays visible (with a “Resolved” badge) and can be reopened. The resolution summary is preserved as part of the thread’s history.

How do audit threads differ from the other types? Audit threads are primarily written by the system. They are meant to be read for compliance and traceability rather than chatted in.

Do threads count toward storage / plan limits? Thread messages are stored in your workspace’s operational database and do not count toward file-storage quotas.