Aliancia sektorových rád

Published 1 September 2026

The association needed to find out how ready Slovak employers are for an ageing workforce — in numbers that can be compared between companies and across sectors. SBID built a public survey on Power Pages: an employer signs in with a company ID and a code from their inbox, fills in only the sections that apply to them, and the answers land in Dataverse. The whole survey — 24 forms, 110 questions and 770 table cells — is stored as data, so a new question never means deploying the site.

Problem: a survey you cannot email as a spreadsheet

Finding out how employers deal with the age of their people takes more than one question. The association needed the age and education profile of the workforce, sick days and injuries, occupational health checks, training and reskilling, benefits, how work is adapted to people's needs, and the shape of social dialogue — all in a form that can be compared between companies and across 24 sectors of the economy.

The survey grew into eight sections and twenty-four forms. Some are multiple-choice questions, some are tables holding several hundred numbers, and one form combines both. Sending that out as a spreadsheet means collecting dozens of differently filled-in versions back — and asking an HR officer to create an account somewhere for the sake of one questionnaire.

Solution 1: a public survey on Power Pages

The survey runs as a public site on Power Pages. Access is created by the association on their own side: they save the employer with a company ID and an email address, and the sign-in details go out by email automatically. The employer then enters the company ID and the code on the site — nothing to set up, nothing to fill in beforehand.

Once inside, they see the list of forms and which ones they have already submitted. An opened form comes back pre-filled with their last answers, so adding one number does not mean filling in the whole table again.

• Access is created on the employer's record and the email goes out on its own
• Employers sign in with their company ID and the code from that email
• The overview shows which forms are done and which are left
• A submitted form reopens pre-filled with the previous answers
• Seven Power Automate flows sit between the site and Dataverse — from sign-in to submitting a form

Solution 2: the survey is data, not code

If the questions lived in the page, every change of wording would mean a deployment. The whole survey therefore lives in Dataverse as records: sections, forms, questions and answer options. The site asks for them when a form is opened and renders them by type.

Table forms are described by a JSON layout — the rows, the column groups above them and the totals row below. The same renderer handles a ten-row table of age bands and a form that mixes a table with multiple-choice questions.

• 8 sections and 24 forms, in an order the association sets itself
• 110 questions with 340 answer options, held as records in Dataverse
• Three form types: multiple choice, table, and a hybrid combining both
• A new question or a reworded one is a record edit, not a deployment

Solution 3: 770 numbers that have to add up

The hard data sits in twelve table forms holding seven hundred and seventy numeric cells between them. The workforce profile alone has ten age bands, and for each of them men and women, three levels of education and night work — seventy numbers in a single form.

To make that data usable, the site recalculates the totals rows as people type, and a form will not submit with a required field left empty. Where the right answer is zero, one button fills it into every remaining cell at once — instead of the respondent clicking through seventy of them.

• Totals recalculate while typing, not after submission
• One button fills zeros into the cells left empty
• A form does not submit until the required fields are filled in
• Answers are stored per employer and form, with the date they were filled in

Solution 4: everyone gets their own scope

Not every section applies to every employer — questions for a trade union make no sense where there is none. The scope of the survey is therefore part of the employer's record, and the site offers only what applies to them.

An administrator does not set the hidden sections; they tick the visible ones in a custom component on the form itself. What gets saved is guarded by two custom APIs in Dataverse — one validates the setting, the other writes it — and the form warns before anyone leaves with an unsaved change.

• The scope of the survey is set per individual employer
• The administrator ticks the visible sections, not the hidden ones
• Validation and write run as custom APIs in Dataverse, not as a browser script
• An unsaved change of scope is not lost — the form flags it

Solution 5: administration in a model-driven app

The association does not run the survey by filing a request for a site change; it runs it in a model-driven app. Employers, sections, forms, questions and submitted answers with their dates all sit in one place.

The app also keeps the data sane: the company ID is checked as it is typed, the access code is created when an employer record is saved and emailed out, and a question form shows only the fields its type actually needs — a layout for a table, answer options for a multiple-choice question.

• Employers, sections, forms, questions and answers in a single app
• The company ID is validated on entry, not when the employer tries to sign in
• The access code is created when the record is saved and the email goes out automatically
• Each question form shows only the fields that question type needs

Result: data collection run from Dataverse

• Employers fill the survey in on a public site; their access arrives by email
• 24 forms, 110 questions and 770 table cells are stored as data
• Totals and required fields are checked while filling in, not after submission
• The scope of the survey can be set for each employer separately
• Answers from 24 sectors sit in Dataverse ready to be analysed
• Changing a question is a record edit — no deployment, no touching the site