A series auto-assigns surveys at the right points in a client's episode — a baseline at admit, weekly check-ins, at discharge, 30 days post-discharge, and so on. Once a series is set up, clinicians don't need to assign those surveys manually.

Find survey series in Settings

Series are managed on the Settings page, on the Survey Series card. A scope selector at the top of the card switches between Account (series that apply to every program) and an individual program. Within the selected scope, rules are organized by Admit and Discharge phase.

Survey series terms: phase, frequency, label format, on-demand

• Phase — Admit (during treatment, measured from the admit date) or Discharge (measured from the discharge date). Discharge-phase series don't start firing until the client has a discharge date.
• Frequency — how often the survey recurs. Options are: Once, Daily, Weekly, Bi-weekly, Monthly, Quarterly, Semi-annual, Annual, Custom, Static Days, Day of Week, Day of Month, and On-demand.
• Label format — how the instance label reads: days (A0, A7, D30), weeks (AW1, DW4), months (AM1, DM12), or years (AY1, DY2). The formats offered depend on the frequency you pick.
• On-demand — an on-demand series doesn't auto-generate. It exposes a one-click On-Demand view on the client's Surveys tab where a clinician can fire it on the spot. On-demand instances get sequential labels like A5-1.

How do I create a survey series rule?

1. Open Settings and go to the Survey Series card.
2. Choose the scope to update — a program, or Account for account-level series — then add a new rule for that scope.
3. Fill in:
   • Series Name (optional) — e.g. Weekly Admit Battery.
   • Phase — Admit or Discharge.
   • Surveys — check the instruments that make up this series (any from your Library).
   • Frequency — see the list above. For Custom, set Days Between Instances (the survey repeats on that interval). For Static Days, enter specific day offsets, comma-separated (e.g. 0, 30, 60, 90, 180, 365). Day of Month takes comma-separated days of the month; Day of Week uses checkboxes. For On-demand, the schedule fields are disabled.
   • Start Day / End Day — the day offsets within the phase that this series covers.
   • Assign to — Client and/or Related Contacts. On-demand rules are client-only.
   • Administer by — Default (uses the client's default), Interview, Phone, Paper, Kiosk, or Link. Use Default to respect each client's delivery-method preference; on-demand rules are fixed to Interview.
   • Activate before due date — how many days ahead of the due date the instance appears. It is answerable straight away, so this is the lead time the client gets.
   • Expire after due date — how many days past the due date the instance stays open. This is also when it expires.
   • Standalone Instances — leave this off for a standard recurring battery. Turn it on when instances need to stand on their own; see below.
   • Criteria (optional) — narrow eligibility by diagnosis code, age range, gender, or tag. When set, only clients matching all specified criteria get instances generated. For tags, a client matches if they carry any one of the selected tags. Archived tags are ignored at runtime, so archiving a tag won't accidentally widen a series.
4. Review the preview of generated instances and click Save.

How survey series assignments are generated

• When a client is enrolled in a program, every active series attached to that program (and every active account-level series) runs for them — subject to the series's criteria.
• The system pre-computes due dates in a forward window and creates one instance per due date.
• When a discharge date is recorded, discharge-phase series start generating.

What is the matching window?

Every due date carries a window — a period around it in which the instance is open and a completion still “counts” for that timepoint. It has two sides, set separately, so you can open an instance early without also leaving it open late:

• Activate before due date — days ahead of the due date the instance is created and becomes answerable.
• Expire after due date — days past the due date it stays open. This is the expiry date, and the latest a completion can still be attributed to that timepoint.

Both sides are required — a blank is not “no window”, and the rule cannot be saved until each is filled in. Enter 0 for “the due date only”. New rules arrive pre-filled with a per-frequency default on both sides (daily: 0 days, weekly: 3, bi-weekly: 5, monthly: 7, quarterly: 14, semi-annual: 30, annual: 30, custom: 3), narrowed if the cadence is too tight for it, and changing the frequency re-seeds both sides to the new frequency’s default.

Two limits apply, and whichever is tighter wins.

• The two sides together cannot exceed the gap between consecutive due dates minus one day. Any wider and neighbouring instances would overlap, leaving a completion in the overlap ambiguous between two timepoints. Weekly allows 6 days combined, bi-weekly 13, monthly 29. For Custom, Static Days, Day of Week, and Day of Month the limit comes from the shortest gap the schedule you entered produces, so it changes as you edit the schedule. Once never recurs, so it has no combined limit, and On-demand uses no window at all (both fields are disabled).
• Each side on its own cannot exceed 30 days, on every series. On the long cadences this is the limit that binds — quarterly, semi-annual, and annual all have plenty of room between due dates, but a window wider than 30 days would never generate the instance at all.

Each field carries its own limit as a maximum, and a rule that exceeds one cannot be saved — the editor names the limit it broke, for example Instance window (before + after) cannot exceed 6 days for a weekly series, or Instance window cannot exceed 30 days before the due date.

What are standalone instances?

Normally the instances in a series share a schedule: each due date is a slot, only one instance is open at a time, and the first matching completion fills the slot. Standalone Instances turns that off for a rule — every instance it creates stands on its own.

• Instances may overlap. A new one is created on its due date even if an earlier one is still open, and the combined-window limit above no longer applies (each side is still capped at 30 days).
• Only its own completion satisfies it. A completion from a different rule, or a survey assigned near the same date, never fills a standalone instance. The reverse still works: completing a standalone survey can satisfy an ordinary series timepoint whose window it falls in.
• The label is fixed at creation. Ordinary series labels are derived from the client’s admit or discharge date, so correcting that date later re-labels them. A standalone label does not move.

Use it when instances genuinely need to be answered independently — an instrument that stays open for weeks, one that may be administered more than once in a period, or one whose window has to be wider than its cadence allows. Standalone is not available for On-demand rules, which already behave this way.

How do I edit or deactivate a series?

Edit a series rule the same way you created it — click the rule in the series list. Use the active switch in the modal footer to deactivate a rule. Deactivating stops new instances from being generated; existing instances stay put.

Related articles

• Programs
• Clinician: managing a survey instance