Alert rules
Alert rules are the automation behind Alerts. Each rule watches one survey, and when a new response arrives that meets the conditions you set, it raises an issue in your queue for the team to act on — so you can auto-flag low scores, defect mentions, VIP responses, and anything else worth catching.
Rules belong to the organization selected at the top of the sidebar, and each rule watches a single survey. From this page you refine each rule's conditions, decide who gets notified, and remove rules you no longer need.
How a rule works
A rule watches one survey. Every time a new response to that survey comes in, the rule checks it against your conditions — and if they match, it raises an issue. That issue then appears in Issues & triage, where your team reviews, discusses and resolves it.
Every condition must match
A rule's conditions are always combined with AND. The rule raises an issue only when every condition is true. There's no "or" — if you need alternatives, set up the conditions on a separate rule for each case.
The rules list
Browse every rule in the organization, 25 per page. Each rule shows:
- Name — what the rule is for, so it's easy to recognize at a glance.
- Survey it watches — the single survey whose responses this rule checks.
- Description — a short note on what the rule is meant to catch.
- Actions — manage the rule's conditions, manage its watchers and subscribers, or delete it.
To find a rule quickly, search by name or filter by survey.
Conditions: the heart of a rule
Conditions are what make a rule fire. A rule has one or more conditions, and each one is built from three parts: a field, a comparison, and a value.
Choosing a field
The field is the piece of information the condition looks at. It can be:
- A question in the survey the rule watches — for example a rating or a multiple-choice answer.
- A piece of questionnaire metadata — information about the survey or the response context.
- Responder metadata — information about the person who answered.
Metadata fields come from the information your organization captures alongside responses. You can review and manage what's available under Data & AI, and the segments you build from it appear on each issue via customer segments.
Choosing a comparison
The comparison decides how the field's value is tested. You can pick from:
- Equal and Not equal
- Empty and Not empty — these check whether the field has any value at all, so they don't need a value of their own.
- Greater, Greater or equal, Less, Less or equal — for numeric checks like scores.
- Contains and Not contains — for spotting a word or phrase, handy for open-text comments.
- Regular expression — for advanced pattern matching.
- CSV contains and CSV not contains — for checking against a list of values.
Setting a value
For most comparisons you then give a value to test against — a number, a word, a choice. (As noted above, Empty and Not empty are the exceptions and need no value.)
A no-condition rule catches everything
A rule with no conditions raises an issue for every response to the survey it watches. It's a handy catch-all when you want eyes on all incoming feedback for a particular survey.
A concrete example
Say you want to catch unhappy customers at one specific store. Build a rule with two conditions: the NPS rating is Less or equal to 6 (a detractor), and the store Equal to "Athens". Because the conditions combine with AND, the rule raises an issue only for detractors at that store — not for happy customers, and not for detractors elsewhere.
Who gets notified
When a rule fires, you decide who hears about it:
- Watch a rule to receive an email yourself whenever it raises an issue — a personal subscription, just for you.
- Subscribers are email addresses (each with an optional name) that always receive the alert when the rule fires. Add your team leads, a shared inbox, or anyone who should always know.
- A single email alerts switch turns rule emails on or off overall, so you can pause notifications without touching each rule's settings.
Deleting a rule
When a rule has served its purpose, you can remove it from its actions. Deleting asks you to confirm with your account password.
Deleting a rule removes its issues
Deleting a rule also removes every issue it has raised, and it can't be undone. If you want to keep that history, turn off the rule's email alerts and leave it in place instead of deleting it.
Set up an alert
Here's how to shape a rule so it fires on exactly the feedback you care about.
Open the rule's conditions
From the rules list, open the conditions for the rule that watches the survey you want to flag responses on.
Add a condition
Choose a field (a question, questionnaire metadata, or responder metadata), a comparison, and — for most comparisons — a value.
Add more, combined with AND
Add further conditions to narrow things down. Remember every condition must be true for the rule to fire, so each one you add makes the rule more specific.
Add watchers or subscribers
Watch the rule to notify yourself, and add subscriber email addresses for anyone else who should always be told.
Turn email alerts on
Make sure the email alerts switch is on so notifications actually go out when the rule fires.
Tips for good rules
Keep each rule focused on one situation — a single, well-named rule per scenario is far easier to manage than one rule trying to do everything. Because conditions are AND-only, reach for separate rules whenever you'd otherwise want "this or that". And to target specific customers or contexts, lean on metadata fields, which you manage under Data & AI.