Geolocation Object

Important
From Chrome 50, Chrome no longer supports obtaining the user’s location using the HTML5 Geolocation API from pages delivered by non-secure connections. This means that any survey not running on https will not be able to use the Geolocation functionality in Chrome. It is recommended that https is used for all surveys. The ability to enforce https access to the survey is controlled from survey settings, and can be enforced at the company level (contact your system administrator).

Note:
1) To capture this data, a minimum of Internet Explorer 9, Firefox 3 or any WebKit-based browser is needed.
2) For respondents using Internet Explorer, the survey layout must use the newest available version of Internet Explorer rendering. Existing layouts will be rendered as Internet Explorer 7 compatible html, and in this mode geolocation functionality is not available. To avoid the Internet Explorer 7 compatibility checkbox, the “Use newest available version of IE rendering” should be checked in the Survey Layout’s theme property (in SurveyPageMasterSheet).

The Geolocation node is used to capture the longitude and latitude values (the global location) of the respondent's browser. This object is available for both normal (full professional) and standard users, and is added to the Survey tree in the normal manner.

Figure 1 - A geolocation node in the Survey Tree

The location data is retrieved from the respondent's browser client geolocator object. When the respondent passes the geolocation object in the survey, the respondent will normally be requested to confirm that the web page is allowed to access this location data (this request is beyond Forsta's control and it cannot be disabled). The respondent must confirm the access before the data can be copied. If the respondent refuses access, or if JavaScript is disabled, the geolocation data value for this respondent will be blank.

The Geolocation object acts basically in the same way as a "hidden" question, but in this case the object must go to the respondent's browser to gather the information (normal hidden questions do not do this). The object will be "carried" to the browser by attaching itself to the next interactive question that is sent (that is, the next form collecting interactive data, for example a single, multi, numeric etc...). The location data will therefore only be submitted to the server when the page carrying the next interactive question is posted back to the server. In the event the next interactive page is some distance later in the survey, the respondent may have left the survey, been screened for some reason etc. before the location data is returned, and the data will then be lost. It is therefore recommended that a Geolocation object is placed on the same page as the next interactive question.

You can add a question text to a Geolocation node. Then, if the Geolocation node is followed by something that results in a page break appearing before the next interactive question, the node will act as an "Info" node and will display the node's question text along with the Confirm and Deny buttons.

In the Random Data Generator, Geolocation nodes will be assigned random data within the valid geopoint coordinate range. Reporting and Rapid Results will treat this node as if it were an Open Text node.

Note that the Geolocation object has the following limitations:

• It is not supported by Panels.
• It is not supported by the Doc2Survey functionality.

A geolocation node value for a respondent cannot be edited, and the node will not be visible in the left tree view under Survey Data > Edit(go to Modifying or Removing Responses for more information). The value can however be viewed in the Edit page's lower-right frame once the respondent has been selected.