Results, review and exports

Every published flow has a results page. It shows what people answered, how many started and finished, every individual response, and the downloads. None of it needs AI. This page also covers the review queue for suspicious submissions, erasing a response, and the email you can get for each new response.

To open it, choose Results on a flow's card, or Results in the builder once the flow is published.

Read the answers

Results open on Answers, with one block for each question in the order of your flow. What a block shows depends on the question type:

• Every question shows how many answers it got.
• Choice questions show how many people picked each option as a count and a percentage of the answers to that question. A multiple-choice question can add up to more than 100%, because people can pick several, and it says so.
• Ratings show the Average rating. NPS shows the NPS score with Promoters, Passives and Detractors. Numbers show the minimum, median and maximum. Dates show the earliest and the latest. Priority questions show each option's average position.
• Text answers are listed newest first. Use Search answers to find a word, and Show more answers to keep reading.

Under each question, How we count explains the numbers. Every percentage names the numbers behind it, and it only counts people who answered that question. A question with no answers yet says so instead of showing a blank.

To act on what a question shows, choose Turn this into an action under it, or Turn these results into an action for the whole revision. The action keeps a copy of these counts. See Actions and follow-up.

Use Published revision at the top to look at an older revision. When a flow has more than one revision, Compare revisions shows each question side by side. It never treats a question added later as unanswered by people who answered an earlier revision.

Starts, completion and drop-off

Below the answers are four cards:

Imported responses (see Moving in) count in the answers and the ledger. They do not count towards starts, completion rate or average time.

Starts by device class splits starts into mobile, tablet and desktop. Under each question, a line such as 3 distinct sessions reached · 1 expired sessions ended here shows drop-off: how many sessions got that far and how many stopped there.

Pencil counts that a session started and how far it got. It never keeps what someone typed in a form they abandoned, so those partial answers cannot be read, counted or exported.

The response ledger

Response ledger lists every completed, released response. Choose View answers on one to see its revision, when it started and was submitted, who it came from (an invited person or an anonymous response), and each answer beside its question. Questions that person skipped are shown as Not answered · skipped or optional. Answers stay linked to the question and revision that asked them, even after you edit or delete the question.

Narrow the list with these filters. They apply to the ledger and to exports, not to the cards above:

• Response revision and Source: Direct link, Embed, Invitation or Imported. Responses recorded by an earlier runtime may show Historical source unavailable.
• Participant status: Eligible or Opted out, for responses from invited people. The list also offers Bounced, but it always shows nothing in this release, because Pencil receives no bounce reports from your mail provider.
• Submitted from and Submitted through, as dates in your workspace time zone.
• Structured question with Answer contains / equals, to find everyone who gave a particular answer.

Export responses

Choose Export JSON or Export CSV to download the responses that match your current filters. Pencil fixes a cutoff time when you start, so the file holds exactly the matching responses committed by then. When it finishes it tells you how many were exported and how many quarantined responses were left out.

• The file is named pencil-responses- followed by the cutoff time, ending in .json or .csv.
• CSV has one row per response with these columns: response_id, revision_id, revision_number, source, started_at, completed_at, released_at, participant_json, answers_json, cutoff, excluded_quarantined, omitted_questions_json.
• JSON has the cutoff, the filter you used, the number of quarantined responses excluded, and a responses list with the same information.
• Answers are keyed by stable question IDs and include the question's label. Open-text answers are kept in full.
• Quarantined responses are never included until you release them.

Downloads stream through your browser's service worker, so they need a modern browser on HTTPS or on localhost. If a response changes while a download is running, the download stops with a message instead of giving you a mixed file. Refresh and start again.

A response export is a working copy of the answers, not a backup. For a complete backup, see Backup and restore.

Review suspicious submissions

Pencil protects public forms without a CAPTCHA and without loading anything from outside your installation. It uses a hidden field that real people never see, a minimum time between starting and submitting, a token tied to each session, and per-address rate limits. A person filling in a form at a normal pace stays well inside them, though many people sharing one address, such as an office network, can reach the per-address limits together.

• A submission that fills the hidden field is treated as a bot. The sender is shown the normal completion screen, but nothing is saved, and Pencil keeps a private note that it happened. It contains no answers.
• A submission that arrived faster than a person could fill it in (under 3 seconds after starting) is saved complete but quarantined. It is kept out of every count, result and export.

Quarantined responses appear in Quarantined responses, under Human review. Each shows when it arrived, Defence: and the reason, and its answers. Choose Release into results to make it an ordinary response from that moment, with every figure updated. Choose Delete quarantined response and then Confirm deletion to remove it for good. You can release one even after the flow has closed, and releasing never reopens the flow. Nothing leaves quarantine until an operator acts on it, and Pencil never deletes one on its own.

Erase a response

Open a response in the ledger with View answers, choose Erase response, then Confirm erasure. Pencil removes the response and all its answers, and updates your totals and answer reports. Anonymous start and device counts remain, because they cannot be traced to anyone. Only an anonymous record that an erasure happened is kept. To remove an invited person and everything they gave, use Erase contact and responses in Invitations, reminders and consent.

Get an email for each new response

At the bottom of the results page, Response notifications lets each operator choose whether to be emailed about new completed responses on that flow.

• Under Email me about completed responses, choose Immediately or Off. Your choice applies only to you and only to this flow.
• When you publish a flow and have not chosen yet, it is set to Immediately for you. It starts at Off for every other operator, and for flows that were published before this feature existed and have not been published again.
• The email names your business, the flow and the submission time in your workspace time zone, and links to the results, which need a sign-in. It carries no answers and no information about the respondent.
• A response in quarantine sends nothing until you release it. Imported and historical responses never send email.
• Recent notification deliveries shows each attempt. Use Refresh delivery status, and Retry on a failed one. For one whose outcome is unknown, Send again asks you to confirm, because it might email you twice.

Emails come from your no-reply sender address (MAIL_FROM). If that address is not a plain noreply@ or no-reply@ address, collecting responses carries on but this page says why notification email is off. Daily digests and an in-app notification list are not available in this release.