Changing content after your Simulator has gone live

When the Simulator is in its open state and live to the public, you will find you still have access to the admin editable areas. It is important that even though it is technically possible, you don't make any changes to the Simulator structure or integral service group content.

If you do there may be a risk of rendering all responses submitted up to that point invalid. Practically speaking, changes after the site is live could invalidate your exports or mean that they break, depending on the type of amends you make. 

Is there anything I could change without causing a potential disaster?

Yes - it is possible to amend details on the welcome and thank you pages without inadvertently invalidating responses, but similarly, it is important to ensure that any changes you make do not significantly alter the supporting information or respondent experience.

Likewise, if you need to correct spelling mistakes in your service group titles, consequences or long-consequence descriptions, that is also ok - with the following caveats.

• A change from e.g. a positive to a negative (such as changing 'do' to 'don't') is more than a typo and alters entirely the way a consequence would be understood.
• If you need to make any changes that change the meaning/understanding of that particular service group or consequence then you will need to invalidate the responses that came before (or potentially after) the change.

You can make changes to text whilst the Simulator is open. Just make sure you save the changes on the admin side and this will be reflected to the respondents.