This article explains how people who are not registered in flowit can participate in a survey, and what this means for the evaluation of results.
🔍 What are External Participants?
External participants are people who are not registered in flowit but can still take part in a survey. This makes it possible to gather feedback from people outside your own organisation – for example from customers, partners, or other external stakeholders.
✅ Requirement: Enabling the Feature
The ability to invite external participants must first be activated on your flowit instance. You can check this when creating a survey: after selecting a team, the option Allow people without a flowit account to participate in the survey should appear. If this option is not visible, contact the flowit support team or your Customer Success Manager to have the feature enabled for your instance.
🛠️ Setup
Step 1
Click on Surveys in the navigation bar.
Step 2
Click the “New Survey” button under “All Surveys,” and you'll be taken to the survey creation page.
Step 3
Select a team.
Note: A team must always be selected – even if the survey is directed exclusively at external participants. Depending on your scenario:
External participants only: Create a dedicated team (e.g. "External Surveys") with at least one person in it, ideally with an admin role. This team can be reused for all future external surveys.
Internal participants only: Select the relevant internal team. Leave the External Participants checkbox deactivated.
Mixed (internal + external): Select the internal team the survey is being sent to, and additionally activate the External Participants checkbox.
Step 4
Check the box Allow people without a flowit account to participate in the survey.
Once the checkbox is activated, the Introduction Page section appears below. When non-registered people open the survey link, they will be redirected to this introduction page before the actual survey begins. The Headline and Subtitle fields allow you to customise the text on this page.
Step 5
Configure the remaining settings as usual (title, start and end date, anonymity) and click Save as draft & edit.
📤 Sharing the Invitation Link
The invitation link for external participants is only generated once the survey is live. To find the link:
Step 1
Click on Surveys in the navigation bar.
Step 2
Open the All Surveys tab and click on Active.
Step 3
Find the relevant survey and click the Share button to copy the link.
Send the copied link to your external participants – via email, chat, or any other channel.
📊 Impact on the Evaluation
External participants take part anonymously. Their responses flow fully into the overall evaluation (Total). The following should be noted:
The survey insights show how many external people participated fully and how many only partially.
It is not possible to filter results exclusively by external participants.
Since external responses are included directly in the Total, keep in mind when interpreting results that the group of participants does not consist exclusively of internal employees.