Free Text

Free text questions allow you to collect data from users in their own words. It is helpful if you want to hear the nuance of language choices or if you are unsure of what types of things users might say so can’t yet devise a question with a fixed set of possible answers. Free text questions tend to have a lower response rate because it require more effort from the user.

Add a new Free Text Question

To add a new free text question, simply click on the "+" icon in the bottom right of the canvas and select "Free Text".

Configuring Question

Simply double click in the free text card's Question field and type your desired question.

Free Text Settings

There are several more options for configuring your free text question. To choose your desired settings, simply click on the button on the bottom left of the free text card.

These are question-level settings. The configurations you choose do not carry over to all questions, or all free text questions in your survey. If you have more than one free choice text in your survey, you will need to make configure your desired settings for each individual question.

Free Text Options

In this section you can:

• Input text for:

  • Hint Text: This is the text that will display in the text input box before the user starts typing his or her answer.

  • Submit Label: This is the text of the button the user will click to submit their free text response. The default value is "Submit" when not explicitly set.

  • Error Text: The error message that displays when there is a value detected that has masking enabled in the Account Settings (e.g. email or phone number). Please see "Personal Information Detection and Error Messaging" section below.

  • Empty Error Text: This only needs to be set if your survey will be shown in All-at-once mode with individual question empty error enabled. Please see "Question Display" section for more details. If this is not set, the default message will display, which is: "Required.".

• Input field rows: this setting determines the line height of the text area. The default value is 1 row.

• Max Length: this input determines the maximum number of characters allowed for the user response.

Personal Information Detection & Error Messaging

Pulse Insights automatically monitors open-text responses in surveys to help prevent the collection of personally identifiable information (PII). If a response appears to include sensitive information, the user will see the following error message:

"Oops, looks like you are trying to submit personal information."

This behavior is controlled at the account level via Data Masking Settings, and is enabled by default for all accounts with PII restrictions in place.

Trigger Criteria

The system triggers this error when open-text input contains patterns that match known PII formats. These include:

• Email addresses

• Phone numbers

• Social Security Numbers (SSNs) or similar government ID formats (U.S. or international)

• Credit card numbers

• Driver’s license numbers

• Any string containing a large number of consecutive digits (to detect structured numerical identifiers)

Detection is pattern-based and may vary slightly depending on regional formatting (e.g., U.S. vs EU identifiers), but it is primarily designed to catch sensitive data entry, not general personal information like names or dates.

Customization

The error message text can be customized for each free text question using the Error Text field in the Console. If no custom message is entered, the default system message will display.

Additional Content

You can optionally display custom content at the header or footer of the question. You can use the simple WYSIWYG editing or advanced HTML editing, complete with code beautification and line numbers.

This is a great feature to use to show any fine print or disclaimers.

questions, you can set the maximum number of checkboxes the user can select. If you enable this option, you can enter the number of maximum responses a user can select (e.g. Select all that apply, up to 3).