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Piping allows you to personalize your survey by reusing an answer that a respondent selected in an earlier question.
Instead of showing the same fixed question text to every respondent, piping helps your survey adapt based on the respondent’s previous answers. This makes the survey feel more relevant, conversational, and tailored to each person’s experience.
For example, if you ask respondents to select their favorite product in an earlier question, you can use their selected answer inside a follow-up question. If a respondent selects Product A, the next question can automatically include Product A in the question text.
Instead of asking:
What do you like about the product you selected?
You can ask:
What do you like about Product A?
This makes the question clearer and more personal for the respondent.
Piping does not change the path of the survey like branching does. Instead, it changes the text displayed in a question or helper text by inserting an answer from a previous question.
This means piping is mainly used for personalization, while branching is used to control where respondents go next in the survey.
Piping works by taking the answer selected in an earlier question and inserting it into a later question.
For example:
Question 1: Which product did you purchase?
Options: Product A, Product B, Product C
Question 2 with piping: What made you choose [selected product]?
If the respondent selected Product B, the question will appear as:
What made you choose Product B?
This allows each respondent to see a question that matches their own answer.
Important note about Piping
Piping can only use answers from previous single-choice or multiple-choice questions.
This means you can only pipe answers from question types where respondents select one or more predefined options.
Follow the steps below to add answer piping to a survey question.
Go to the survey you want to edit.
Click Edit to open the survey in the survey builder.
Once the survey builder opens, you will see the list of questions in your survey.
Click the question where you want the piped answer to appear.
This should be a question that comes after the question you want to pipe from.
For example, if Question 1 asks respondents to select a product, you can add piping to Question 2, Question 3, or any later question.
You cannot add useful piping to the first question because respondents have not answered any previous question yet.
After selecting the question, you will see two tabs:
Main
Advanced
Click Advanced.
The Advanced tab contains additional settings and advanced features for the selected question.
Inside the Advanced tab, scroll down until you find Answer Piping.
Under Answer Piping, you will see two options:
Insert into question text
Insert into helper text
Click Insert into question text.
After clicking this option, the Insert Answer Piping panel will appear on the right-hand side of the screen.
This panel allows you to choose the previous question whose answer should be inserted into the current question text.
In the Insert Answer Piping panel, select a previous single choice or multiple choice question.
The selected question is the source question. This means the respondent’s answer from that question will be inserted into the current question.
For example, if Question 1 asks:
Which product did you use?
You can select Question 1 as the source question and insert the selected answer into a later question.
After selecting the previous question you want to use for answer piping, click Done.
This confirms your selection and inserts the piping reference into the question text.
Once this is done, the selected answer from the previous question will be used dynamically inside the current question when a respondent takes the survey.
After adding the piping, use the Preview option to test how the question will appear to respondents.
In the preview, go through the survey as a respondent would. Select an answer from the earlier question that you used as the piping source.
When you reach the question where piping was inserted, you should see that the selected answer has been added into the question text.
This allows you to confirm that the piping is working correctly before you publish or share the survey.
You can also insert a piped answer into the helper text of a question.
This is useful when you want to keep the main question simple but add personalized context below it.
For example:
Question text:
Please tell us more about your experience.
Helper text:
Your answer should focus on your experience with [selected service].
If the respondent selected Installation, the helper text will appear as:
Your answer should focus on your experience with Installation.
Go to the survey you want to edit.
Click Edit to open the survey in the survey builder.
Once the survey builder opens, select the question where you want the piped answer to appear in the helper text.
Click the question where you want to insert the piped answer into the helper text.
This should be a question that appears after the question you want to pipe from.
For example, if Question 1 asks respondents to choose a service they used, you can add piping into the helper text of Question 2, Question 3, or any later question.
You cannot use answer piping in a meaningful way on the first question because there is no previous answer available yet.
After selecting the question, you will see two tabs:
Main
Advanced
Click Advanced.
The Advanced tab contains additional settings and advanced features for the selected question.
Under Answer Piping, you will see two options:
Insert into question text
Insert into helper text
Click Insert into helper text.
After clicking this option, the Insert Answer Piping panel will appear on the right-hand side of the screen.
This panel allows you to select the previous question whose answer should be inserted into the helper text of the current question.
In the Insert Answer Piping panel, select the previous single choice or multiple choice question you want to use as the piping source.
The selected question is the question where the respondent’s answer will be taken from.
For example, if Question 1 asks:
Which service did you use?
You can select Question 1 as the source question. The respondent’s selected answer from Question 1 can then be inserted into the helper text of the current question.
After selecting the previous question you want to use for answer piping, click Done.
This confirms your selection and inserts the piping reference into the helper text.
Once this is done, the selected answer from the previous question will be used dynamically inside the helper text when a respondent takes the survey.
After adding the piping, use the Preview option to test how the helper text will appear to respondents.
In the preview, go through the survey as a respondent would. Select an answer from the earlier question that you used as the piping source.
When you reach the question where piping was inserted into the helper text, you should see that the selected answer has been added to the helper text.
This allows you to confirm that the piping is working correctly before you publish or share the survey.
In the survey builder or preview, the inserted piping may appear as a reference to the selected source question.
When respondents take the survey, this reference will be replaced with the actual answer they selected from the earlier question.