Under Surveys->Add, you'll find a number of options for setting up your survey. The options are conveniently divided into six sections: General Options, Security Options, Response Options, Navigation Options, Survey Completion Options, and Decline Page Select Options.
In this article, we'll go through each section to discuss the options that are available for your survey. The first section,
General Options, contains the basic settings that affect your survey and is pictured below.
The Name you give your survey is what you will call it and recognize it by within your admin interface. It is for internal use only, and your respondents will never see it. They will see the Display Title as the main title within the survey pages, and the Window Title will be used as they title of their browser window. If you have created your own custom design style under Settings->Styles, you may select it from the Design Style dropdown in this section. Otherwise, you can use the default iSalient design style.
The Status field indicates the stage you are currently at with your survey. At this phase of developing the survey, you'll probably want to leave it set to "Design". Later on this value will change to "Open", when its actually being deployed, and finally "Closed", when you're finished with it. The start and end date indicate the days when your survey period will begin and end. These can be left blank if no specific time-frame is desired. The Number of Responses can be used to optionally limit the total number of allowed respondants. Respondents replying to the survey after this quota has been met will be thanked and turned away.
The next section, Security Options, provides three survey security settings. If you enable Restrict Survey with a Password, the survey will be protected with a password of your choosing. Every respondant will have to enter the same password.
The Restrict Survey with Access Codes option allows you to require that each respondant enter a unique access code. This way you can enter a list of access codes yourself (for example, if you have another application that generates the access codes) If you check this option, then you would need to generate the access codes and also distribute them to your list, and they will need to enter the code manually in order to take the survey. Be careful when generating your list of codes, as any duplicate access codes will be treated as a single respondant.
Note: iSalient has the capability to automatically create unique codes for your respondents. This can be accomplished through the email invitations feature. When you send out an email invitation with the %survey_link% variable in the email, the system will replace that with a unique link for each subscriber. This link contains a passcode for each person, so you do not have to generate the access codes or checkmark this option in survey options. In other words, the "Restrict Survey with Access Codes" option in survey options is for manually entering codes, whereas the email invitations feature is entirely automatic and has nothing to do with the "Restrict Survey with Access Codes" option.
You may also restrict your survey to respondants originating from a specific range of IP addresses. This is useful for restricting respondents to a particular organization or geographical location.
The Response Options section allows you control over how your respondents answer your survey questions.
You may elect to "Allow Respondent to Return to Finish Survey", or require that the survey be finished in one sitting by disabling this option. You may also control whether your survey will "Allow Respondent to Change Prior Responses" by enabling or disabling the option in the section.
The "Enable One Response Per Respondent" option will cause iSalient to take a number of steps to ensure that each respondent completes the survey only a single time. When this option is enabled, iSalient will set a cookie in the respondent's browser to track the status of their survey, and will also internally keep track of their IP address.
The next section, Navigation Options, allows you to determine the way in which your respondents will navigate their way through your survey.
The "Page Numbering" option in this section allows you to choose whether to display page numbers or a progress bar on each of your survey pages. The "Question Numbering" setting allows you to determine whether the individual survey questions will be number sequentially throughout the survey, or whether the questions numbers will start back at 1 at the beginning of each page. You can also opt to eliminate question numbers or page numbers entirely.
By enabling the "Show Back Button" option, you may provide your respondents with a way to return to the previous page of questions, and the "Cancel Button" option allows you to select the behavior of the survey's "Cancel" button, if you choose to provide one. You may elect to have the cancel button close the respondent's browser window, redirect to the end of the survey, or redirect to any web page.
The Survey Completion Options section allows you control over the actions iSalient should take when a respondent has completed your survey. As pictured below, a built-in WYSIWYG editor will appear when you select the "Display Thank You Page" option, allowing you to create your own custom end-page on-the-spot. You can alternately direct your respondent to an existing web page, simply close their browser window, or show the respondent a running tally of the survey results.
If an invited respondent should decline to participate in your survey, your settings in the Decline Page Select Options section will determine what page they should be directed to after declining. You may either direct them to an existing web page, or create a custom page in iSalient's inline HTML editor.
When you've finished configuring your survey options, remember to click "Save Changes", and then advance to the Surveys->Manage Surveys page to begin designing your survey!
