Why do Survey counts differ between Guidance Analytics and Product Analytics?

In both GA and PA, Whatfix enables you to view data from the Ready or Production stages. For more information, see Get Analytics Data across CLM Stages.

Stage filter on the Guidance Analytics dashboard:

Data source filter on the Product Analytics dashboard:

PA separates Survey engagement data by stage (Data source filter):

• Ready shows only Ready stage submissions

• Production shows only submissions made after the Survey is published

GA behaves differently. The Stage filter is only used to filter and view the available Survey reports by Ready or Production stages. The Stage filter does not apply to the Responses metric. GA always shows the total cumulative responses across both Ready and Production stages.

Info:

If you publish the Survey and it receives responses, the Survey report appears in the Production stage. If you unpublish the Survey, its report then appears in the Ready stage.

To understand how Survey Submit event counts in PA and Responses counts in GA behave across stages, refer to the following example which covers the different possible scenarios:

Example:

1. A Survey is created on August 1, 2025. It receives 5 user responses in the Ready stage from August 1, 2025 to August 2, 2025.

   Note:

   • While testing Surveys in a non-production environment before it is published, Whatfix records Survey responses in the Ready stage.

   • Whatfix does not record Survey responses submitted using Preview Mode.

2. The Survey is published on August 2, 2025, and then receives 50 additional responses in the Production stage from August 2, 2025 to August 9, 2025.

3. Later, the Survey is unpublished.

Use the following table to understand how the Survey Submit event count and Responses count are calculated for each scenario:

In PA, after Scenario 3 is completed, the Survey Submit event count is 5 and 50 in Ready and Production, respectively.

In GA, for both Scenarios 2 and 3, when you set the Stage filter as Production or Ready respectively, the number of Survey Responses is 55 (cumulative count of all Survey responses regardless of the selected Stage filter).

In PA, the date filter enables you to view the count of the Survey Submit event within your selected date range. However, in GA, the date filter does not apply to the Responses count, which always shows a cumulative count across both Ready and Production stages.

Date filter on PA:

Date filter on GA:

To understand how Survey Submit event counts in PA and Responses counts in GA behave based on the date filters, refer to the following example:

Example:

1. A Survey is created and then published on August 2, 2025.

2. The Survey receives 50 responses in the Production stage from August 2, 2025, to August 31, 2025:

   1. Users submit 25 responses from August 2, 2025 to August 9, 2025.

   2. Users submit 25 responses from August 10, 2025 to August 31, 2025.

Consider you set the date filter from August 10, 2025 to August 31, 2025. PA shows 25 Survey Submit events (responses submitted during this time period). In GA, irrespective of the date filter, the Responses count is 50 (cumulative count of all Survey responses).

Note:

Use the following table to understand how the Survey Submit event count and Responses count are calculated:

Date filter	Survey Submit event count in PA	Responses count in GA
August 10, 2025 to August 31, 2025	25	50
August 1, 2025 to August 31, 2025	50	50

If users face network issues while submitting a survey, PA may record multiple events for a single user. GA displays only the latest response from each user.

For example, for a given Survey, GA shows 50 Responses, while PA shows the Survey Submit event count as 51. This behavior may be due to PA logging a user’s submission twice.