Response limits
A response limit caps how many responses a campaign will accept. Once a limit is reached, new participants are turned away until it frees up.
Limits can be set on the campaign, in campaign settings, or on each distribution.
What a limit is
A limit is a number and a period: 500 overall, or 100 a day, or 20 an hour. You can set several at once, and a session is refused if any one of them is used up.
The periods are:
| Period | Counts |
|---|---|
| Overall | Every response, for the life of the campaign. |
| Yearly | Responses so far this year. |
| Monthly | Responses so far this month. |
| Weekly | Responses so far this week. |
| Daily | Responses so far today. |
| Hourly | Responses so far this hour. |
Periods run in your site's timezone, so "today" means your local day, and the week starts on the day your site is configured to start it. Buckets look after themselves: when a new day begins, today's count is back to zero without you doing anything.
What counts towards a limit
Two things count, and only one of them is obvious.
Completed responses count, in whichever period they were completed in.
Sessions still in progress also count, against every limit. Each of them will either complete, and so fill a slot for real, or be abandoned and release it. Counting them keeps a busy campaign from overshooting its cap, because the slots people are currently occupying are held for them.
The practical consequence is that a campaign can stop accepting slightly before it reaches the number you set. A campaign capped at 500 with 450 completed and 50 people part way through is full, even though only 450 responses exist. As those 50 finish or drift away, the arithmetic settles.
Sessions that were abandoned, disqualified or turned away do not count at all. They release their slot and never reach the response count.
Campaign limits and distribution limits
The two work at different scopes, and both apply.
A campaign limit counts every response to the campaign, whichever distribution it came through. It is a ceiling on the campaign as a whole.
A distribution limit counts only the responses that came through that distribution. It is a share of the ceiling rather than a separate allowance.
A session is refused if either is used up. So a campaign capped at 1000 a month, with a distribution under it capped at 100 a month, means that distribution stops at 100, and the campaign stops at 1000 no matter how the remaining 900 are spread across the others.
A distribution with no limits of its own is not unlimited. It has no cap of its own, and the campaign's ceiling still applies to it like everything else.
When a limit is reached
The distribution shows its status as Limit reached, and new participants are turned away with an explanation of which limit stopped them. Everyone already part way through carries on and can finish; a limit closes the door, it does not empty the room.
Nothing needs resetting. A periodic limit frees up on its own when the period rolls over, and an overall limit is raised by changing the number and publishing.
Rationing a ceiling between distributions
Because the campaign limit is a ceiling and the distribution limits sit under it, the two together let you say how a fixed number of responses is divided up.
Give the campaign a limit of 1000 a month and three distributions 500, 300 and 200 and you have carved the ceiling into shares. Nobody can take more than their share, and the campaign cannot exceed 1000.
The shares do not have to add up to the ceiling, and it is worth knowing what happens when they do not.
- Shares adding up to less than the ceiling leave part of it unreachable. Three distributions capped at 100 each under a campaign capped at 1000 will never use more than 300.
- Shares adding up to more than the ceiling make it first come, first served. Three distributions capped at 500 each under a campaign capped at 1000 will between them stop at 1000, and whichever is busiest takes the largest part of it.
A distribution limit can never raise the ceiling. If the campaign is full, every distribution is full, however much room its own cap has left.
One thing to watch
An overall limit on a long-running campaign is permanent. Once it is reached, the only way to accept anyone else is to raise the number, since nothing about it rolls over.