Specifically, I'm trying to figure out:
- Can standard Survey objects (like Survey, SurveyQuestion, SurveyResponse) be created/managed programmatically or manually without configuring Digital Experiences (Communities)?
- Is it possible to capture survey responses internally without generating or distributing a public Survey Invitation Link?
Any advice, limitations, or alternative approaches would be greatly appreciated!
Hey Lucia,
On your first question, yes. Survey, SurveyQuestion, SurveyResponse, and related objects are standard Salesforce sObjects, so you can create/manage them programmatically (Apex, API, Data Loader) or manually through Setup and record pages, entirely independent of Experience Cloud. Digital Experiences is only required for a specific distribution scenario (see below), not for object creation/management itself.
On your second question, this depends on who's answering:
- Internal Salesforce-licensed users (with a real user account, not external/unauthenticated respondents): yes, you can capture responses without a public link at all. Assign the required Survey Creator/Manager permission set, build the survey, and send it directly via a Survey Invitation tied to an internal record (e.g., embed it in an email alert, a Flow screen, or just have users navigate to the survey record and respond in-app). No Experience Cloud site is needed for this path.
- External or unauthenticated respondents (customers, non-licensed users, guest access): this is where a Digital Experience site IS required. Per Salesforce's own documentation, to create surveys available to external unauthenticated users, you select an Experience Cloud site as part of survey setup, that's a hard requirement for that specific use case, not optional.
So for a purely internal use case among licensed users, you can skip Digital Experiences entirely. If "internal" in your case means something broader (contractors, non-licensed staff, etc. without a full Salesforce user), you'd hit the Experience Cloud requirement.
One limitation worth flagging: Salesforce's native Survey builder has real constraints on complex branching logic and advanced analytics compared to dedicated survey tools, if your internal use case needs intricate conditional logic, that's worth testing early before committing.
Reference:
https://help.salesforce.com/s/articleView?id=sf.task_enable_surveys.htm&language=en_US&type=5
