Will Survey Manager work with my 'brand x' e-mail server? In most cases the answer is 'yes'! Survey Manager uses the standard SMTP (Simple Mail Transport Protocol) for transmitting email s. SMTP is the standard used by most Internet-enabled email systems. If your email server understands SMTP, it will have no difficulty in processing the email s which Survey Manager sends to it. In the unlikely event that your email server is unable to handle SMTP-based emails, a relatively small customisation will be required to Survey Manager to enable it to talk to your proprietary email protocol.
What skills are needed to use Survey Manager modules? A detailed understanding of the overall surveying process is helpful. Basic Windows and PC skills are essential as well as attention to detail. Survey Manager is a sophisticated tool for managing a process. Process knowledge is a prerequisite for obtaining tool knowledge.
How much training is needed ? Survey Manager comes will full on-line help. Depending upon the existing expertise of the user, training will take 1-2 days. However, some users need no training.
What distinguishes Survey Manager from other web-surveying products? Ability to handle multi-rater surveys as well as standard questionnaires; flexibility in questionnaire design; emailing capacity that is event/status driven; ability to cope with many surveys of different types simultaneously; ability to export seamlessly to third party analysis products; dynamic, real-time links to its database; ability to import respondent files; ability to handle very large datasets, eg, over 200,000 records. But, in particular, meta-tagging of data and the introduction of a metadata engine interrogation interface.
Can Survey Manager support OMR scanners? Survey Manager cannot produce OMR scannable forms, but data from OMR databases can be combined with Survey Manager data.
Does Survey Manager send auto email reminders? The answer to this question depends on your definition of "auto." Survey Manager will send an email to a defined group of respondents, eg, all those who haven't yet completed, but it requires human intervention to prepare and choose the email template, and to press the send button. We could make the software send a pre-arranged message on a user-determined date but as the saying goes "as sure as night follows day something is likely to go wrong" with this much automation. The human touch and decision-making capacity is sometimes useful!
Is custom help text for questions possible? Survey Manager offers three types of question or questionnaire help facilities. Questionnaire designers can have unlimited use of what we call question labels - bits of text that can be placed anywhere in a questionnaire. So instructions, definitions, special terms, etc, can be placed right near the question itself. Alternatively, what we call a resource list can be attached to any questionnaire and this sits in a frame that can appear to the left of questions. This hyperlinked hot spot can lead the respondent to an unlimited amount of html/Word/Excel/PowerPoint/PDF pages that can outline faq, terms/definitions, how to do calculations, who to call, etc. In addition, mouse over (tool tips) are also possible within question parts.
Can you restrict access to a survey? Yes, though logon ID and password issue. Survey Manager will allow you to generate random passwords of user-defined length with either alpha or numeric characters. These can be mail merged into an email template from the Survey Manger database and sent to respondents at survey commencement.
Does Survey Manager check for duplicate responses? Not for anonymous surveys. However, for invitational and multi-rated surveys (both have restricted access), Survey Manager prevents duplicate answering by locking out a completed questionnaire.
How long does it take to get a survey up and running? This depends on the complexity of the questionnaire. But it is possible to get a small questionnaire with a small group of respondents up and running in 30 minutes.
How do I invite people to participate in a survey? A requirement of an invitational survey is a "join up" email, ie, notification that the respondent has been invited to participate in the survey and usually a hyperlink to the actual questionnaire. This notification can be sent by fax or post as well as email.
Can I apply a look and feel templates to a questionnaire? Yes, Survey Manager comes with a set of preloaded templates which you can apply with a mouse click, or you can edit them, or you can create your own. In addition, you have a lot of control over where and how various questionnaire components are displayed, such as alignment, scales displayed horizontally or vertically, component colours and fonts, use of images and logos, etc.
What type of branching does Survey Manager support? There are several types of branching, or jumps, within Survey Manager. Conditional jumping can occur when a respondent chooses a particular answer. As soon as the answer is chosen they are moved to a user-designated question. Unconditional jumping can occur when a respondent completes a set of questions. After completing the questions and clicking on the save or next button, they are taken to a new question or set of questions – so the jump is not conditional on a particular answer, just that they have answered. What we term qualified responses (also known as adaptive answering) occurs after a respondent chooses answers from a list of options and only the questions pertaining to the chosen options are displayed later in the questionnaire.
Can Survey Manager manage quotas? Survey Manager can be set to accept a user-defined number of respondents at project creation. Once the quota is achieved, the questionnaire is closed and respondents receive a message advising them of this.
