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Survey Messages Overview

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    Authoring contains a large number of texts and messages of different types; for example the message that appears when a respondent forgets to answer a required question, the message that is displayed to a respondent when a survey is closed, the text displayed on the Cancel button etc. These texts and messages are already translated into a number of "standard" languages, and you can specify that any of these languages are to be used by a survey (go to General for more information). However you may wish to have the messages displayed in a language that Authoring does not provide as standard. Or perhaps you wish to change some of the texts and messages to suit a particular survey or dialect.

    Authoring provides three levels of "message editing" functionality:

    • Site-wide - available to the Site Administrator via the Admin > Languages and Messages > Survey Messages menu command. This level is described in the Forsta Administrator Manual.
    • Company level - available to the Company administrator via the Home menu command (go to Company Overview for more information). Editing the messages is described below, and this level is also described in the Forsta Administrator Manual.
    • Survey level - available to the survey supervisor via the Survey Management > Survey Messages menu command. Editing the messages is described below.

    Note: Messages edited at the Survey level override any edited at the Company or Site level.

    The Survey Messages form is as shown below - here.

    Important
    This Functionality is only supported in Microsoft Internet Explorer 11.

    Figure 1 - The Survey Messages form

    The font family, size, color etc. used to display the survey messages are controlled via the HTML Styles. To adjust the font properties for the messages, in the Survey Tree toolbox go to the Survey Layout > Html Styles folder. Note that the names of the styles that control the various messages (error messages, texts etc.) in your particular survey may vary depending on the theme that has been selected for the survey. Some experimentation may therefore be required to find the actual style that controls a specific message. Double-click on a style to open its Properties page, and here you can make the desired changes (go to Working on an HTML Style for more information).

    Note: If a survey containing edited message texts is duplicated, the edited message texts will be included in the new survey.

    Editing a Survey Message

    To edit a survey message:

    1. Open the survey you wish to work with and go to the Survey Management > Survey Messages menu command.

      2. The Survey Specific Survey Messages form opens.

    2. To find a particular message, click the down-arrow beside the Go to field and browse to the required message.

      3. The messages are listed in logical groups; for example Standard - General, Standard - Login, Error - Numeric, etc.

    3. If the survey is available in several languages, select the message language you wish to edit.

      4. For example, if the survey is available in English and French, you can edit just the messages that will appear for English-language surveys, just the messages that will appear for French-language surveys, or both.

    4. Edit the message text as appropriate - .

      5. Figure 2 - Editing a message text

    5. Click Save to save the changes.

    The font family, size, color etc. used to display the survey messages are controlled via the HTML Styles. To adjust the font properties for the messages, in the Survey Tree toolbox go to the Survey Layout > Html Styles folder. Note that the names of the styles that control the various messages (error messages, texts etc.) in your particular survey may vary depending on the theme that has been selected for the survey. Some experimentation may therefore be required to find the actual style that controls a specific message. Double-click on a style to open its Properties page, and here you can make the desired changes (go to Working on an HTML Style for more information).

    If/when the appropriate situation arises, your new message text will now be displayed to the respondent instead of the original text supplied by Authoring.

    Note: If the survey is duplicated, any edited message texts will be included in the new survey.

    Copying Survey Messages to your Clipboard

    If you wish to edit a large number of survey messages, you may find it easier to do this in another application. You can therefore copy the messages to your clipboard and paste them from there into an external application, for example Microsoft Excel. Once you have made the required changes, you can them copy the data from the external application and paste it back into the Survey Messages form.

    1. Click Copy Modified Texts... or Copy All Texts... as appropriate.
    2. Open the external application you wish to use to edit the texts.
    3. Paste the contents of the clipboard into the application.

      4. Note: The message name code is copied along with the actual message text - . This is so that when the message is pasted back into Authoring, Authoring will know which message is being pasted. When you copy the text(s) prior to pasting them back into Authoring, you must therefore ensure that you also copy the message name codes.

      Figure 3 - Example of the messages copied into Microsoft Excel

    4. When you have finished editing the text(s), copy them as appropriate, return to the Authoring Survey Messages window, and click Paste from Clipboard.

      5. The message texts will be updated in the Survey Messages window.

    5. Click Save to save the changes.

    Clearing Edited Texts

    In the event you wish to remove all the edited message texts for a survey and return the message texts to their "standard" forms:

    1. Click Clear All Texts.

      2. A confirmation dialog box is displayed.

    2. Click OK to confirm the deletion or Cancel to abort.

      3. Note: Only the texts in the currently-selected language will be deleted. If the survey is available in several languages and you have edited the texts in more than one, then you will need to select each language in turn and clear its texts separately.

    3. Click Save to save the changes.

    Standard Languages

    The texts and messages presented to users and/or respondents are translated into a number of "standard" languages. You can specify that any of these languages are to be used by a survey (go to General for more information). The languages provided by Authoring are:

    • Arabic
    • Chinese simplified
    • Chinese traditional
    • Czech
    • Danish
    • Dutch
    • English
    • Estonian
    • Finnish
    • French
    • German
    • Hebrew
    • Italian
    • Japanese
    • Korean
    • Norwegian
    • Polish
    • Portuguese
    • Russian
    • Spanish
    • Swedish
    • Thai

    Note: The system-generated error messages that are presented to respondents are translated into English, Norwegian, Swedish, German, French, Spanish, Finnish, Danish, Italian, Dutch, Portuguese, Japanese, Chinese Simplified, Chinese Traditional, Korean, Arabic, Russian and Hebrew. For other languages, the error messages will be defaulted into the main category (for example: Venezuelan Spanish into Spanish). If a language is not available, the error messages will be displayed in English, which is the overall default language.

    When projects are migrated from one server to another, for example if a user is changing from an On-Premise installation to SaaS, custom error messages for languages that are not covered in Authoring standard list will not be included in the migration and will have to be moved "manually".

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