The Questions tab of the survey editor lists every question in your survey in one table, and it is where you control how each question is named in reporting. The table has Line, Reporting Label, Question, Breakout, and Tags columns, with a search bar above it that filters by question text, reporting label, or tag name.
Renaming reporting labels
The reporting label is the short name the platform uses for a question everywhere outside the survey itself: the question picker on a report's Scope step, row and column headers in crosstabs, and data exports — the long Excel format, for example, writes it as the reporting_id column. A question programmed as "Which of the following brands have you purchased in the past 3 months?" is much easier to work with in a report when its label is simply "Brands Purchased P3M".
To rename a label, click into the Reporting Label cell and type — the field edits inline, with no separate dialog. If a question has no label of its own, the cell shows the full question text as a placeholder. When you're done, click Save in the survey editor; the survey updates briefly and the new labels flow through to reports.
Two things to know:
- Labels are read-only while the survey is updating, and when you only have read-only access to the survey.
- Surveys within the same project share default reporting labels, which keeps names consistent across waves of a tracker. Renaming a label never touches the survey code or what respondents see — it only changes how the question is identified in reporting.
Choosing breakout questions
Use the Breakout switch beside each question to include or exclude it from reporting defaults, then select Save in the survey editor. The switch shows the question's current selection, including its initial AI-selected default.
Choose questions that make useful comparisons for the study, such as age group, customer type, or region. This changes reporting defaults; it does not change question wording or respondents' answers. An individual report's Scope step still lets you choose its rows and columns.
The Question and Tags columns
The Question column shows the question wording. Longer text is shortened to fit the table; use the line link to inspect the question in the survey code.
The Tags column shows any tags attached to the question in the survey code with s.tag(...) — for example a brand or platform tag on a block of repeated questions. Tags group questions for reporting and can be used as rows or columns in a report; they are set in code rather than on this tab. See Adding metadata to questions for how tagging works.
Jumping to the survey code
The Line column shows a link for questions with a survey-code line. Click the line number to open the Survey Code tab with the editor positioned at that question — the fastest route from "this question looks wrong in the list" to fixing it in code.
Derived questions live here too
The Questions tab is also where derived questions are created and managed. Click + DERIVED QUESTION above the table to combine two or more existing questions into a new reporting question — "Age × Gender", for example. Derived questions appear at the top of the table with a Derived chip, and their row has edit and delete controls instead of a survey-code link, since they don't exist in the survey code. See Derived Questions for the full walkthrough.
When to use this tab
Before creating reports, use the Questions tab to give each question a clear reporting label. To find or change a question later, search by its wording, label or tag, then use its Line link to open the survey code.
For the broader reporting workflow, read how to automate report writing with MX8 Labs.