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Organization-Based Data Sharing

Everything in an Askalot organization follows one of two rules. Research — your projects and everything built inside them — always belongs to the project's owners. The respondent panel — the people you survey and the pools and strategies that select them — follows the organization's sharing mode: in a private organization the whole team shares it, and in a non-private organization it stays with the project it belongs to.

The Two Rules

What Rule Non-private organization Private organization
Projects, questionnaires (and their QML), campaigns, surveys, Bundles, datasets, the Research Paper, AI conversations Project ownership Owners of the project and administrators can see and change them The same — the sharing mode never opens research to the rest of the team
Respondents, respondent pools, sampling strategies, AI-indexed documents Respondent panel Follow the project they belong to: its owners and administrators. Anything without a project is reached by administrators only Every member can see and work with every one of them, whatever project they belong to, including those with no project

A few details complete the picture:

  • A private organization can set AI defaults. Its administrator can choose a Reasoning provider and models that members inherit until they set their own; see AI functions and models. A non-private organization has none.
  • Interviewers reach their assigned surveys. An interviewer can open and conduct the surveys assigned to them without owning the project, in the app and through the API alike.
  • Your role still applies. Sharing the panel decides which respondents, pools and strategies you can reach; your role decides what you can do with them. Changing a pool or strategy needs the Manager or Designer role, so an Analyst sees the shared panel but does not change it.
  • A shared respondent is shared for editing too. In a private organization, any member whose role allows editing respondents can change a shared respondent's details, including the email address invitations are sent to — also for respondents used in a colleague's campaign.
  • Using a shared respondent in your research needs both sides. Assigning a pool to a campaign, a strategy to a Bundle, or a respondent to a survey needs access to that panel item and ownership of the campaign, Bundle or survey's project.
  • Deleting from the panel never removes someone else's research. Deleting a respondent also removes their surveys, and deleting a pool or strategy detaches it from the campaigns or Bundles that use it. If any of those belong to a project you do not own, the delete is refused and the message names the campaign, survey or Bundle in the way. An owner of that project or an administrator can delete it, or you can remove the link first.
  • In a private organization, a panel item's project is a label. You can create a respondent, pool or strategy in any project of the organization or with no project at all; the project list you pick from shows the projects you can see.

Sharing Mode Is Fixed When the Organization Is Created

The sharing mode is chosen once, when the organization is created, and never changes afterwards. Organizations that need a different mode are set up as a new organization. Every check reads the mode from the organization itself on each request, so it applies the same way in the app, the API, the MCP tools and the AI panel.

Default resources (non-private organizations): Each user automatically receives a personal default project and a default sampling strategy (with standard gender and age factors) when they join. The default project can be renamed but not deleted; like every new project, it starts with an editable starter questionnaire. The default strategy is read-only, providing a consistent demographic baseline for pool generation.

Non-private suits organizations with multiple independent research teams, and environments requiring stricter data separation within the organization. Private suits teams that work from one shared respondent panel — small organizations and research groups where sharing respondents is expected.

Working in Private Organizations

Respondents

Respondents are a shared resource:

  1. Navigate to Respondents in Targetor
  2. See every respondent in the organization
  3. Import respondents into any project, or into none, and they are available to the whole team
  4. Use any respondent in the campaigns of projects you own

Campaigns

When creating or editing a campaign:

  • Select from the questionnaires in projects you own
  • Assign any pool from the shared panel
  • Track the campaigns of projects you own — other members' campaigns stay with their projects

Working in Non-Private Organizations

Respondents

Respondents belong to their project:

  1. Navigate to Respondents in Targetor
  2. See the respondents of the projects you own
  3. Import respondents into one of your projects
  4. Campaigns use the respondents of their own project

Project Ownership (Both Modes)

Project ownership is how individuals collaborate in either mode:

  • Projects: Only visible to users listed as owners; only an owner (or an administrator) can rename, delete, or change who else owns it. Owners must all be members of the project's organization — adding a user who is not a member is rejected outright, with no partial change
  • Questionnaires: Visible and editable if you own the parent project. This governs the questionnaire's QML too — the QML and its whole version history belong to the questionnaire, so there is no separate file to share or hide
  • Campaigns: Visible and editable if you own the parent project. This includes assigning a campaign's respondents to interviewers and sending its invitations, through the app, the API and the MCP tools alike
  • Surveys: Visible, editable and deletable if you own the project of the survey's campaign or of its questionnaire, or if you are the survey's assigned interviewer, through the app, the API and the MCP tools alike. Creating surveys in a campaign, and sending one survey's invitation link, follow the campaign's rule above
  • Bundles and datasets: Visible and editable if you own the parent project
  • Respondents, pools and strategies: In a non-private organization, visible and editable if you own their project (without a project, administrators only); in a private organization, shared with every member as described above

One organization reads differently: the Askalot Demo organization. On the free sandbox, every account is a member of the sealed Askalot Demo organization, and there every member can read every project and what belongs to it — questionnaires, campaigns, Bundles, datasets and the Research Paper — and try its questionnaires out in a preview, without being an owner. Nobody can change anything there, and its audit trail stays visible to administrators only. No customer organization works this way: in yours, the rules above apply.

Administrator Access

Users with administrator privileges can see all content regardless of sharing mode. This enables platform-wide management and support.

AI-Indexed Documents

When using AI-Assisted Questionnaire Generation, uploaded research documents are indexed for semantic search. Indexed documents are part of the respondent panel's rule:

Organization Document visibility Organization-wide document library
Private All indexed documents shared org-wide — any member can search across all indexed materials Members with the Manager or Designer role add and remove documents
Non-private Indexed documents scoped to their project — only users working on that project can search them Administrators only

The document library holds reference documents only. A questionnaire is never uploaded there: questionnaires are created inside a project and follow its ownership.

How It Works

An editing session in Armiger is bound to one project, chosen before the editor opens, and that project is what documents are indexed into:

  • Documents uploaded or referenced during the session are indexed under that project
  • The session's chat is that project's conversation — moving to another project is a fresh session with access to only that project's indexed documents
  • The document tools the Designer uses (search, summary, listing) respect the project boundary

Why This Matters

In non-private organizations with multiple research teams, project-scoped isolation prevents accidental data leakage:

  • A researcher working on "Customer Satisfaction 2026" cannot search documents indexed by another team working on "Employee Engagement Q1"
  • Each team's research materials remain confidential to their project
  • This protection applies to the Designer and every specialist it delegates to

In private organizations, the collaborative trust model applies — all indexed documents are visible to all users, enabling teams to build on each other's research materials.

Practical Examples

Non-Private Organization: University Department

A university department with 10 independent researchers:

User Can See Can Use
Prof. Alice Alice's projects, respondents, and indexed documents Alice's resources only
Dr. Bob Bob's projects, respondents, and indexed documents Bob's resources only
Dr. Carol Carol's projects, respondents, and indexed documents Carol's resources only

Each researcher works independently. Alice's survey respondents cannot be accidentally used by Bob. When Alice uses the AI panel to index research papers, those documents are only visible within Alice's project — Bob's Research Agent cannot search them. Universities often choose non-private mode because researchers typically run independent studies with separate data, though a tight-knit research group may choose private mode for a shared respondent pool.

Private Organization: Market Research Firm

A market research firm with a collaborative team:

User Can See Can Use
Team Lead All respondents and indexed documents, plus every project they own Any respondent, search all indexed materials
Analyst A All respondents and indexed documents, plus every project they own Any respondent, search all indexed materials
Analyst B All respondents and indexed documents, plus every project they own Any respondent, search all indexed materials

Everyone works from one shared panel, while each project's research stays with its owners. The team lead can build on Analyst A's questionnaire design by joining that project as an owner. Analyst B can survey respondents that the team lead imported in a campaign of a project Analyst B owns. When using the AI panel, any team member can search across documents that others indexed during their AI sessions. Business-tier organizations commonly pick private mode because team members work closely together on shared client projects — but the choice is made at org-creation time, not locked by tier.

How sharing mode maps to organization type

Sharing mode is set when the organization is created and never changes afterwards. The default ACME organization on every tenant is non-private (it is a shared sandbox where individuals are isolated and collaborate at the project level). Every other organization — Business, Community, and future subtypes — has its sharing mode chosen explicitly at create time; there is no default.

Organization Sharing mode Rationale
ACME on dev (Trial) Non-private Shared sandbox; per-user isolation; collaboration via projects
ACME on a production tenant (Professional) Non-private Shared bucket for individual paying subscribers; solo workspace
Business (dedicated org, production tenant) Operator-chosen at create time Typically private for tight-knit teams; non-private is valid when each project should keep its own respondents
Community (dedicated org, dev) Operator-chosen at create time University departments often pick non-private; consortia may pick private
Enterprise (dedicated tenant) Custom per deal Full infrastructure isolation; sharing mode part of the contract

If your Professional workspace needs a respondent panel shared across teammates, talk to sales about Business — a dedicated organization whose sharing mode is chosen when it is created.

Best Practices

For Private Organizations

  • Label panel items by project - A respondent, pool or strategy can sit in any project or none, so pick the project that tells colleagues what it is for
  • Delete with care - Removing a shared respondent, pool or strategy that other projects use is refused; ask that project's owner to remove the link first
  • Coordinate respondent imports - Avoid duplicate respondent records
  • Use external IDs consistently - Link respondents to your CRM or panel provider

For Non-Private Organizations

  • Use project collaboration - Add team members as project owners to share a project's questionnaires, campaigns and respondents
  • Document respondent sources - Use the source_system field to track origin

Frequently Asked Questions

How do I know which sharing mode my organization uses?

Contact your Askalot administrator. If you can see respondents and indexed documents from projects you do not own, your organization is in private mode.

Can I share just one questionnaire with another user?

Add the other user as an owner of the project that questionnaire belongs to. This works in both sharing modes — questionnaires and their QML always follow project ownership, so there is nothing else to configure. The new owner must be a member of the project's organization; someone whose home is another organization can be added once an administrator has made them a member of this one, and removing them from the organization also removes them as an owner of its projects.

Can we switch between sharing modes?

No. The sharing mode is chosen when the organization is created and cannot be changed afterwards, by anyone. A team that needs the other mode is set up as a new organization.

Does a private organization share questionnaires, campaigns or datasets?

No. A private organization shares its respondent panel — respondents, pools, sampling strategies and indexed documents — and nothing else. Projects and everything built in them stay with their owners in every organization; add a colleague as a project owner to work on it together.

Next Steps