Imagine the following scenario, which can most often happen when you have recently joined NutriAdmin.

  1. You a questionnaire called "client questionnaire", then send it to a test client.
  2. The test client fills in the "client questionnaire" and sends it back.
  3. You access the questionnaire within the client record and are able to go through the data.
  4. You go back to the questionnaire editor and modify fields in your "client questionnaire".
  5. Now you return to the client record to review the questionnaire and some of the fields you have edited are gone!

How can we avoid losing questionnaire fields in this scenario?

What is happening here is that there is only one questionnaire template for all clients. When you edit the questionnaire fields, this affects all clients. This means that if you send the questionnaire now, the client fills in all fields, then you remove some of those fields, you won't be able to see the data for that client.

This scenario can happen when you just joined NutriAdmin and are testing/tweaking the software. If you lose test data, hopefully that is not a problem.

On the other hand, if this happened with important real client data we could recover it from backups (though it takes us some time & effort). Please reach out as soon as possible if this happens to you so that we can help you recover any lost data.

In our experience, a problem like the one described in this article happens rarely, as most users set up their questionnaires initially and then hardly change them. If a field is ever removed it's typically because it's not so important. Although obviously accidental removal of important data can happen which is why we keep backups.

To avoid losing questionnaire data when editing fields, you could do the following:

  • Make modifications initially when setting your account. Then, if possible, you can add new fields but try to avoid removing fields (or changing their type. E.g. changing a text field into a table will make the previous text not visible).
  • You can remove fields if you are comfortable with losing access to historical data for past clients for that particular field when they filled that field.
  • You can add new fields or reorder them without any problems. The only issue is when you remove a field.
  • You could generate a report to keep historical data for key clients if you are about to remove a field. Then, even if you lose the particular field in the questionnaire, you will still have a report with the data.
  • You could create a duplicate of a questionnaire and make a variation. The duplicate could be called "client questionnaire - version 2". By doing this, you could keep any number of versions of your questionnaire. You would make changes to the latest version and leave previous ones untouched. This way, you can send the latest version to new clients (or old ones) whilst still keeping the data for your old clients that filled in previous versions of the questionnaires.