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Surveys Overview

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    In Professional Authoring there are two types of Survey designer available: Standard Designer and Professional Designer. Standard Designer is intended for simple Surveys with no advanced scripting or routing. This help center describes Professional Designer.

    Dragging and Dropping

    Most objects can be moved to different destinations by using the drag-and-drop method. Afterwards, they can be edited by double-clicking or right-clicking and choosing Properties or Edit from the menu.

    When editing Surveys, you can drag the elements from the New Objects and Secondary Project toolboxes, and drop them into the Survey routing. The dotted line - indicates where the item will be placed.

    Figure 1 - Drag-and-Drop operations

    When inserting items into folders (usually the item that is to be the first item in the folder), you must point the mouse pointer at the folder icon itself so that the folder opens, and then drop the item in. The name of the folder will usually be highlighted. If you want to drop an item after a folder, point to the name of the folder until the dashed line is displayed underlining the folder, and then drop the item - .

    Figure 2 - Drag-and-drop into folder

    Frames and Panes

    When working in a Survey, the screen can be divided into four frames. Three of these can be opened and closed as required - .

    Figure 3 - Panes and frames

    The Quick Access pane (A) gives you access to the most frequently used functionality, and to the Quick Find search field. Here you can search for surveys, panels, and Reportal reports by their IDs or titles. If you have only one hit, the survey/panel/report will open instantly. If you have more than one hit, the items will be displayed in a menu allowing you to select the one you are interested in. If you have hits within different categories (survey, panels, reports) they will be grouped by category. In the event you need more space on the screen, you can open and close this frame by clicking on the Pane Open/Close button in the border to the right of the frame - .

    Figure 4 - The Pane Open/Close button

    When you enter Survey Designer for a survey, the Survey Toolbox pane (B) opens displaying the Survey Tree, New Objects, and Visual Components toolboxes. Open and close this frame by clicking on the Pane Open/Close button in the border to the right of the frame.

    The editing pane (C) is the main frame in the window. It is in this area that you will do most of your work on surveys etc.

    The Properties Frame (D) displays the property sheet of the current question. Toggle this sheet by clicking on the Show/Hide Properties button in the Question Details page toolbar (E), and see more properties by clicking the Show advanced view button in the Properties pane (go to Property Sheets for more information).

    The lower frame of the window (F) displays information about the currently selected survey.

    Toolboxes

    The toolboxes - - located towards the left side of the Designer page are displayed and available throughout the process of creating and editing a Survey. You can close the toolbox column by clicking the < icon located in the vertical frame on the right side of the toolbox column. Via the toolboxes, you have access to the current Survey, the objects and visual components that can be used in Surveys, and other surveys from which you may wish to copy questions to the current Survey.

    Figure 5 - The Toolboxes

    Click on the drop-down arrow in the upper right corner of the toolbox panel to open a menu - (see the figure below). Using this menu you can add or remove the items from the toolbox as required. Alternatively, you can hide the items by clicking the X button in the upper right corner of each item.

    Figure 6 - Removing toolboxes

    The various panels in the Toolbox can also be collapsed by clicking the arrow button in the upper left corner of the appropriate panel - . In the example below, the New Objects and Secondary Project items have been collapsed. Click on the Expand button (the downward-pointing chevrons) to reopen the panel.

    Figure 7 - Collapse toolboxes

    You can rearrange the panels in the toolbox. To do this, click and hold the mouse pointer on the blue header bar, then drag the panel to the desired location.

    To resize the toolboxes, click on and hold the - icon located in the lower frame of each toolbox panel, then drag the frame vertically to the desired position.

    To edit an object in the Survey Tree, either double-click on it or right-click on it and choose Properties or Edit from the menu - .

    Figure 8 - The survey's right-click menu

    The right-click menu will contain different items depending on the object selected:

    Note: Some of these menu items are not available for Standard users.

    • Edit - opens the object's editor page.
    • Insert (After) - displays a new menu with all the items from the New Objects toolbox. Select an object from this menu to insert it after the object that you right-clicked.
    • Insert (Inside) - appears when you right-click on folders. A new menu is displayed with all items from the New Objects toolbox. Select an object from this menu to insert it inside (below in the tree) the object that you right-clicked.
    • Spell Check - opens the Spell Checker for the question (go to Spell Checker for more information).
    • Refresh - refreshes the Survey Tree to reflect the recent changes.
    • Grid View - opens the Grid View configuration page (go to Grid View for more information)
    • Search - opens the Search Options page (go to Search Grid View for more information).
    • Convert to - objects can in many cases be converted to another type if required. The types to which you can convert an object depend on the original object; for example a Date object can be converted to an Open Text or a Numeric object.
    • Show Deleted - shows any nodes that have been soft-deleted (go to Deleting Objects for more information).
    • Check Script Code - [not Standard user] checks the scripts, validation codes, masking codes and conditional expressions in the Survey. A list of errors (if any) is generated and displayed as clickable links in a separate pane below the Script Node Editor - . Click on an error link to open the script object containing the error, and the object will also be highlighted in the Survey tree (go to Checking Your Code for more information). Note that you do not have to compile or generate to use this feature.

    Figure 9 - Checking script code

    Some of the objects in the Secondary Project (go to Secondary Project Toolbox for more information) can be right-clicked to display an action menu - .

    Figure 10 - Menu in secondary projects

    Property Sheets

    Most objects in the Survey Tree toolbox have a wide range of properties and settings. You can customize these via the object's property sheet. To open the property sheet, right-click on the object in the toolbox and choose Properties, or double-click on the object and click the Toggle the properties for this question button (arrowed) if the property sheet is not already displayed. The property sheet opens at the Simplified view, with a few of the most-used properties - that are applicable to the question type. Click Show advanced view (ringed) to view the full property sheet. The full property sheet may have several tabs, but it will always display the type and name/title of the active object.

    Figure 11 - Example of a property sheet for a single question

    Click here for more details on Question Properties.

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