By default, all survey responses are stored on the site, and administrators can review or download a CSV of the answers at any time. (If you'd rather not store responses at all, you can turn that off too - see Store Responses below.)

Form Builder vs Surveys?

To some extent this duplicates functionality of the Form Builder app. Have a think about which one would be best for your needs before creating lots of forms. There are a few differences between them:

  • Form Builder always emails responses directly to you and never stores them on the Voice server. Surveys stores all answers on the server by default, which you can view in the admin pages and download as CSV - but it can also be set up to not store responses and just email them to a list of recipients instead, which covers Form Builder's use case too.
  • Surveys allow file attachments which are also stored on the server, but Form Builder does not.
  • Surveys can be embedded on a page using the Survey includelet, and a list of surveys shown using the Surveys List includelet. There are currently no includelets for the Form Builder app.

I tend to think that the Surveys app is a better fit for most situations - even if you don't want responses stored on the server, since Surveys can now do that too.

Enabling Surveys

To enable the application, open the Content menu in the administration pages and choose Applications, and click the Enable button next to Surveys.

Once enabled, you navigate to the administration interface for the application from within the administration pages for the website. Go to Content Management (in the Content menu), and click on Surveys in the Site Map.

You can create many surveys with the Surveys application. Each survey can be split into many sections and be displayed over multiple pages. To help provide a high quality survey we recommend that you plan it in advance, to have a good idea of the breakdown of sections and questions that you want before you start building the survey.

Managing Surveys

When you navigate to the main surveys administration interface all of your existing surveys will be displayed, listing the name, whether it is enabled, the creator and creation date, and a set of action buttons.

The link () button gives you the public URL for the survey. The preview () button opens a popup where you can click through the survey exactly as a respondent would, without it needing to be enabled or public, and without saving anything you enter (there's also a Preview button on the Questions tab, for quickly checking your changes as you build a survey). The edit () button takes you to the standard administration interface for that survey. The copy () button creates a complete copy of the survey. Finally the delete () button deletes the survey.

Creating a Survey - Survey Settings

To create a new survey click the Add a Survey button and enter a name and description. You will also be asked if you would like to make your survey Public, which means users do not need to be logged into the Voice service to submit answers. If you are considering making your survey Public be aware that under these conditions there will be nothing to stop automated spam software from answering your survey and it is highly likely that you will receive a large number of answers containing useless spam answers.

After you have created the new survey you will be presented with the survery administration interface, viewing the Survey Settings tab. Here you can edit the name and description and configure a variety of aspects of your survey:

  • Enabled - If a survey is not enabled it will not be available for answering by any visitors. Once you are happy that the survey is ready for use make sure to mark the survey as enabled.
  • Public - This determines whether a user needs to be logged in to answer the survey.
    To reduce spam, public surveys will show a CAPTCHA to anonymous users which they need to complete before they can submit their response. Logged in users will not need to do this.
  • Single Response - While this option is checked all users will only be able to submit one response to a survey. If it is unchecked then users can submit multiple answers. Be aware that this can't be enforced if the survey is "Public" (the service can't tell when an anonymous user has already responded), or if Store Responses is off (there's nothing left to check against once a response is saved).
  • Editable Answers - This option determines whether users can go back and edit their answers after they have submitted a response. It's not available when Store Responses is off, since there's nothing saved for them to reopen.
  • Store Responses - Untick this if you don't want responses saved on the server at all - handy if you're collecting something sensitive and would rather it only ever reached your inbox. Pair it with the Email Recipients list (on the Email and Notifications tab) so responses go somewhere, otherwise every response is simply thrown away. You'll see a warning on this tab if Store Responses is off, in red if there are no email recipients configured yet (nothing would be kept at all) or amber once there are (as a reminder that email delivery isn't confirmed - a bad address still means a lost response).
  • Single Section - Usually for smaller, simpler surveys - checking this option uses a single section for the entire survey. If you're survey is longer or more complex you may uncheck this option to spread your survey over many sections and/or pages.
  • Complete URL - optionally set a URL of a page on your site where users will be redirected when they complete the survey. e.g., a custom Thank You page.
  • Opens At / Closes At - optionally restrict the survey to a date range. Leave either blank for no restriction at that end. Outside the window the survey still shows in listings (with "Opens ..." or "Closed" in place of the usual button) and the direct link shows a friendly message instead of the form, rather than disappearing altogether. Closes At must be after Opens At.

Any response left unfinished (a respondent started a multi-page survey but never got to the end) is automatically cleared out after 30 days, or after 24 hours for surveys with Store Responses off. You don't need to do anything for this to happen.

Sections

Modifying your form to include multiple sections breaks the form up making it more manageable for users to respond, and gives you greater control over the flow of the survey.

To use sections within your survey, firstly uncheck the Single Section option from the Survey Settings. The Questions tab will now display an Add New Section button. Whenever you add a section or edit an existing section you will have the following options:

Section Name - The heading given to this section

Variable Name - The text entered here will be used as the label for the section in a CSV download of the survey responses. Note: you may not use spaces or special characters in this field.

Description - The description of this section

The Above Description is - Defines whether the description provided is HTML or plain text.

Start the next section on a new page - If Yes, the next section of the survey is shown to the user on a new web page after this one. If No, it appears on the same page. A conditional section always starts the next section on a new page (this option is hidden for it), so that the answer it depends on has been given before it is shown.

Position - The position of this section relative to other sections in the survey.

Conditional Section - Leave this as No - always shown for a normal section, or pick an answer to an earlier multiple choice or yes/no question so that the section is only shown to people who gave that answer. Only questions in sections before this one are offered, so the first section can't be conditional. For more information see the Conditional sections part of the manual.

Adding Questions

To add questions to a survey select the Questions tab, and click the Add a Question button, complete the resulting form, and repeat this process for each question you would like to add. Each new question will be added to the end of the form. If you would like to add a question in the middle of your current questions please see the Managing Questions section.

The form for a new question consists of:

Question - The text of the question you would like to ask the respondent. The question will be displayed to the user exactly as you type it here.

Presentation Type - There are several types of question available when creating survey questions, and for each type extra options appear on the same form when you pick a type that has them.

  • Essay Answer - a text area to type the answer. When selecting this question type you will further be asked to indicate how large a text area to provide for the respondents answer.
  • One line Answer - a single line of text. When selecting this question type you will further be asked to indicate how large a text answer to offer the user and the type of response. If you specify a type other than "text" the system will check that the respondents answer is appropriate for the question response type.
  • Date - the user must reply with a date. The system will check that a valid date is entered before allowing the form to be submitted.
  • File Attachment - This question type provides the option for users to upload a file for their answer.
  • Multiple choice - There are a variety of options for multiple choice consisting of - whether to offer the list as a drop down list, a set of radio options where only one answer is allowed, or checkboxes in which multiple answers are allowed. All of the above can also be offered with an associated text field as part of the answer. When selecting this question type you will be offered a simple default set of options to offer as answers, or the chance to enter your own set of options. When entering your own set be aware you must provide each separate answer on a different line in the space provided.

Required - This option determines whether a respondent will be required to answer this question to be able to submit their response.

Managing Questions

To review the current list of questions select the Questions tab. They will be listed as they will be offered to the respondent. From here the action buttons under each question allow you to edit, move up and down, or delete the question. You are also able to use the Add button to add a question directly below this question, and the Copy button to create a copy of the current question directly below it, which you can then edit and move up and down as you require.

Managing Responses

All responses to your surveys are held on the system. To review them or download them to your local computer select the Responses tab.

The Summary link takes you to a page that breaks the survey down by question and lets you view the responses for each.

The By User link presents a list of all responses to the survey including a link to the users information page on the Voice service if they were logged in, and their email address. The pen and paper icon lists all the answers from that user.

The two CSV file links allow an administrator to download all the responses (with or without those from anonymous non-logged in visitors) as a comma separated values file. As a CSV this file can be imported into a variety of tools, including most spreadsheet applications.

If a survey has any responses, a Danger zone section appears at the bottom of the Responses tab with a Delete all responses button. This permanently deletes every response to the survey (the survey itself, and its sections and questions, are left intact), so you'll be asked to confirm before it happens. This can't be undone, so make sure you've downloaded a CSV of anything you might want to keep first.

Email and Notifications

This tab of the administration interface offers management tools to support your survey.

Email each response to a recipient list - add email addresses here to get a copy of every response as it's submitted, in addition to (or instead of) storing it on the server. Each recipient is emailed separately, so nobody on the list sees anyone else's address.

It also allows the author of the survey to configure notification emails for themselves whenever a visitor responds to the survey. The "Interval" drop down box specifies how often the system should send the emails to you, such that if hourly or daily is selected, emails will be grouped into batches sent with that frequency.

Finally the author is able to configure two types of emails regarding the survey.

  1. Email users about this survey - Send a custom email to your site members, or to users who have completed the survey. e.g., you can use this to invite your members to complete the survey, or to give feedback to users who have done so.
  2. Email users when they complete this survey - This is only available for non-Public surveys (i.e., surveys where users need to log in to complete it). You can set up an email template that will be sent to users when the complete the survey.

Visitor Access to Surveys

Before a survey can be filled in you must enable it. To do this go to the Survey Settings tab and check the enabled checkbox.

Potential respondents can then access the survey through one of three ways:

  1. If the surveys application is included in the main navigation of your site they can click the Surveys link and then click the Answer Survey link corresponding to your survey.
  2. The administrator can visit the first page of the survey and copy and paste the URL of the survey into your CMS content. See the Content Management System documentation for further details on adding links to pages.
  3. The Send Authenticated Link functionality can be used to allow users to access the survey directly.

Permissions

To configure the permissions, go to the administration pages for your website, open the Content menu, and choose Applications. Click the Permissions button next to the Surveys application in the list. For further details of how to use Permissions, see the Permissions section of the manual.

  • Users with Admin permission can edit and create surveys.
  • Users with Contribute permission can answer the questions in a survey.
  • Users cannot create their own surveys, only administrators can do this.
  • As with other permission pages, The Public can't be given Contribute or Admin here, and Registered Users can't be given Admin - those boxes are locked.

Conditional sections

Conditional sections allow questions to be displayed to a user only under certain conditions. A conditional section is only shown (or is missed out entirely) based on a user's previous response to a multiple choice or yes/no question. Each conditional section has its own condition, and sections after it don't depend on whether it was shown. With a small amount of effort this can allow very complex surveys.

As a simple example, a survey might have 4 sections. Question 2 in the first section might be multiple choice with possible answers being yes, no, or don't know. The last section might be a normal section that is always shown. Sections two and three might both be conditional sections, one on the yes answer to question 2 and one on the no answer to question 2. In this situation if a respondent answers "don't know" to question 2, they will only see the first and last section of the survey. Where as a respondent that answers yes or no will see the first section, then the section that corresponds to the answer they gave to question 2, followed by the final section.

Includelets

The Surveys List includelet can be used to add an overview of available surveys to a page, with a Respond button for each that the visiting user is able to answer. Surveys are not shown to users who don't have permission to respond. If a survey has an Opens At / Closes At window and it's outside it, the survey stays in the list but shows "Opens ..." or "Closed" instead of the Respond button.

The Survey includelet can be used to embed a single survey on a page - such as a membership form. In order to embed a Survey it must be Single Section (i.e., no conditional sections!) and Public (so any user can answer it). You can choose whether or not to show a CAPTCHA to anonymous users. If the survey hasn't opened yet or has closed, visitors see a short message saying so in place of the form.

By using these includelets you can remove the Surveys app from the main site navigation and have control over where the surveys are presented to users.