I was pretty much putting off some studying I had to do tonight, so I went through the the feature/functionality thread and created an updated To-Do list that, I think, includes everything that has been asked for. They are sort of prioritized within the main categories regarding importance, ease of programming, etc.

Comments are welcome/appreciated.

• Regarding Survey Properties:
  
  • Is there an issue with copying dependencies when creating a (copied) survey? (fixed)
  • Does clearing results clear who took the survey (number of times), also, as it should? (fixed)
  • Add ability to send invitation to: (working on)
    
    • All invitees
    • All uninvited invitees
    • All invitees who have not participated
    • Also, ability to choose which template to use on a per-use basis
  • Allow relative paths in "Completion Redirect Page URL" (working on)
  • Enable save/continue/edit feature controlled by admin option:
    ( ) Do not allow users to save/continue survey (no save feature)
    ( ) Allow users to continue/edit last saved/completed survey within [__] [minutes/hours/days]
    ( ) Allow users to continue/edit any saved/completed survey (choose which by date/time stamp)
    within [__] [minutes/hours/days]
  • Admin option to allow users to view own results/answers (on results.php page)
  • Allow users to self-register with or without admin approval option
  • Import/export users and surveys from CSV file
  • Authentication API (allow dropin file to authenticate to vBulletin, phpBB, etc)
  • Delete/move multiple questions at a time
  • Ability to hide the question list or just show last entered question when creating survey questions
  • Set minimum time to complete surveys so that Admin can exclude these from results (optionally)
  • Password encryption/hash controlled by a configuration setting
  • Send custom email upon completion of survey (either to designated address,
    user who completed survey (requires email address in access control or email question),
    or both)
• Regarding Survey Results:
  
  • (bug?) Changing answer type from text to MM/MS results in no results showing up (working on)
  • Add custom reports feature to include custom result layouts (working on)
    
    • Average
    • Numeric total
    • Crosstab
    • etc.
  • Filter based on text fields (matching search, for example)
  • Add ability to list text answers from newest -> latest
    and latest -> newest. (done)
  • Allow users to choose how many text results are shown per page (done)
  • Add more graphical representations of the answers
    to questions, such as pie graph, etc
• Regarding questions/answers:
  
  • Are lookbacks copied when new surveys are created? (done)
  • Add alternate input types (working on)
    
    • Date w/range
    • Numeric w/range
    • MM or Text type and require X out of Y answers (choose 3 out of 5)
    • Email
  • Add ability to add questions to blocks/groups along with:
    
    • assign dependencies per block
    • ability to randomize question order per block
    • display only a set number of questions out of total in block
      (have bank of twenty questions and randomly choose 5)
    • allow nested blocks
    • ability to treat questions within block as "one question"
      (example: could ask one question with language oriented towards children with answer
      values of boy/girl and another question oriented towards adults with answer values
      of male/female and have results be counted towards the same question)
    • ability to enforce unique answers per block
      (example: have 5 questions where user must rate something from 1 - 5 and enforce
      that within the block, each number is only chosen once)
  • Add ability to randomize answer values on a per question basis
  • Add ability to include "other" block on a per question basis
  • Add ability to include dropdown/text type answers in a matrix layout
  • Ability to assign default answer to questions (with appropriate warning that it will probably skew results)
  • Add ability to add/edit from default answer set
  • Ability to create dependencies based upon whether text field was empty or not
  • Ability to import question/answer set from other surveys
  • Incorporate features that'll make a "test engine"
    
    • Flag answer value(s) as "correct"
    • Assign weight to questions and answers
    • Show grade/score on Access Control page
    • Admin option to show correct answer or not
  • Match S or T answer types to regular expression (advanced)
  • Consistent display of dependencies (answer values sorted the same)
• Regarding taking Surveys:
  
  • Remove "previous page" from first page of surveys (done)
  • Print version of survey (but how to handle dependencies?)
  • Ability to choose between "page x of y" or "%x complete" (or provide the relevant variables
    (so users can adjust the templates)
  • Add JavaScript elapsed time clock to surveys with time limit
  • Add "notice" label when taking a survey as Admin (because access-controls are
    bypassed and completed-surveys are not incremented)
• PHP related:
  
  • Add language file and move any strings there (working on)
  • Move any magic numbers/strings to constants (working on)
  • Detect ability to create subdirectories (regarding Smarty) upon installation
    and dynamically set $use_sub_dirs to FALSE is unable
  • (Full) Support for alternate databases
  • Fix concurrency issues. If a lot of people move questions
    around in the same survey at the same time, it could
    cause trouble
  • Include the (optional) use an an SMTP mailer class that'll handle authentication
    for those users who require it
  • More relevant login error messages (i.e. user "cannot view results", "create survey", etc).

---John Holmes...

Hi;

My, what a list, enought to keep you busy for some time I bet...

I missed seeing my request, which boils down to

* when editing questions, dependencies displayed in consistently sorted order and layout

Thanks!

hugh

Good catch. I added that to the list now. Don't worry about location, the order is just barely prioritized.

---John Holmes...

So many features! Especially the feature of Enable save/continue/edit feature controlled by admin option. Expecting the new version...

One minor thing may be ignored in your list.

When viewing results, a username and pw are prompted. If correct user and pw without viewing-result right are inputed, a message of 'Incorrect Username and/or Password' will show up. Should this be changed to 'You cannot view the result' because it is a little bit confusing since correct user and pw are inputted?

EDIT: Added to list, JWH

Hi John,
Your TO Do list is great but I am wondering if you can consider my questions as well. I need to use this software for per user, that is, each user can register and get userid & password, then log in the survey, answer questions and finally view his own result base on his userid. I will appreciate if you let me know if it is possible with you software even in future or not, Because I really need this feature.

EDIT: Added to list, JWH

John, can you consider something like this:

When TEXT Input or TEXt block is used for a question, the adminsitrator could be able to enter a list of "clue-words" so if they are found in the user's response, they could be highlighted in the results tables

Example
1.-From wich brand is this logo?
(highlight: SONY)

Answer: I THINK THIS LOGO COULD BE FROM SONY


So at the output, the word SONY would appear highlighted


Not sure if u can understand my idea


----
BTW I should say this is an outstanding project. My full thanks and admiration for John: CLAP CLAP CLAP!!!

With little improvements, Uccass could be a very good petition générator.

I'have take a look on php petition systems. any of them included surveys fonctions.

The difference between petition and survey systems are :
- the ability to send a particular message and result to a liste of specific destinaires
- personalisation of the informations for users ( adress, club, sexe, etc.)
- list of the user of the petition with anti-spam and filters for the public page.

Hi John. Great job. I'm really proud to know that there are people out there willing to spend so much time on a free project.

I am new to UCASS, so please forgive me if this issue has been discussed and rested before. What I would like to do is use the system to build a database of survey participants who would register and submit some demographic information about themselves. This I intend to achieve by creating a public survey accessible from the home page. Once I create surveys, I can then invite these people to take them, without having to ask demographic questions again in the individual surveys.

However, when I am analysing the results of these surveys, I would like to relate them to the basic demographics in the main partcipants' database. This would amount to analysing results from 2 "merged" surveys. Is this possible. Can you add this to your list?

Venturer

Dear John

Perhaps an area for inputing historical / present existing data as a report option for comparison against the survey results?

thx a million

on line 157 in special_results.class.php

The content-type should be changed to text/csv

I like everything I see. But, there is one minor (?) thing I'd like to see. If a person would like to add another option to a poll question, could there be a answer option for "other" that would add that to the poll? An example would be:

What make car do you own?
Ford
Chev
Dodge
Mercury
Other

Now, if the person taking the poll has a VW, they would be able to click on other and add VW as a new choice to the list. The list would now read as:

What make car do you own?
Ford
Chev
Dodge
Mercury
VW
Other

Thanks for allowing me to submit my suggestion.

What I really miss is this:

Question example

What do you study:

o Business Administration
o Psychology
o Nothing _____________
o Other: [_____________]

When you select "Other:" you may type your study in the textbox to the right... that's what it's supposed to look like

As far as I know you can't have questions of this type yet, right?

Keep up the good work!

Cheers!

erikito, you've got the idea. I was using phpESP which did this, however it was a very difficult package to work with. And the displaying of results was a real task to implement. But, it did have the Other option which worked extremely well. Now, if they can get this into UCCASS, it will be nothing short of great!

hi,
i don't see in your to-do list the export in spss-like format:

It's just a little change for multiple choiche question:

instead of write a single cell with "1,3,5" in corrispondence of the column of question, it's better to create cell in corrispondence of 5 columns, 1 columns for each answer value.

eg. the question

* which drink do you like?
1) coke
2) fanta
3) pepsi
4) 7up
5) orangina

If i answer 1,3 and 5:

now UCCASS write 1 cell with the string "1,3,5"

but SPSS and other software for statistic analysis can import cvs as follows:

1,0,1,0,1

It's an important feature... thanks...

Hi John, just downloaded and installed this tool... gorgeous! Well Done!

I am wondering whether I could suggest another feature: Batch Invitation Upload... I am working on survey that 100s of people are going to take, and it is quite tedious to enter all those names/emails by hand. A simple text field with TAB separated Name[TAB]email would suffice brilliantly.

Oh, as a rabid TikiWiki user... hey, U R using Smarty, why not make a module for TikiWiki? That would be awesome.

All The Best
J

Hello,

The web interface to create/modify a survey is very nice.

It would be also very nice to have the possibility to export the survey (the structure itself) to a text file,
(in a XML format, for instance)
in order to keep a copy of the survey, to send it to someone else (so that he can install that survey in his web server), or just to modify some things faster. (moving blocks of questions around)

would it be possible to have this export/import feature of a survey structure?

Regards!

How about Authentication through LDAP instead of MySQL

Admin option to allow users to view own results/answers (on results.php page)

I hope this means we will be able to allow the users to see only their own results? This program is perfect except it shows the results for everyone instead of just the one user at the end. Unless I'm missing something?

Thanks!

The system is built around the idea that surveys are anonymous. You cannot track answers down to an individual user. Where you can, I've implemented safeguards (that can be easily bypassed, mind you, but at least they default to on).

I have mixed emotions on implementing a system where individuals can be related to their answers. I can have a notice displayed that'll warn/inform the user, but that can be easily removed by someone looking to circumvent the system.

My intent, I guess... is to allow anonymity to be on a per-survey basis. The admin will check whether anonymity should be maintained for the survey or not and an appropriate notice will be shown at the beginning of the survey. This should be fairly easy to implement and then add links on the access control page for viewing answers of specific users. Maybe add a drop down or something to the filter list for doing the same from the results page...

---John Holmes...

This would be a great feature in my opinion. It would allow someone to extrapolate the data based on demographics or other prelim questions to narrow down what type of respondent felt a certain way. I'm not sure if the CSV export in UCCASS would generate a raw data dump that ties responses back to each user, but that would be a quick fix to get this level of reports though Excel.

Great work! I love it!

The ToDo list includes "Ability to import question/answer set from other surveys".
It would be very useful to be able to export/import surveys in a text format such as xml.
That would make it relatively easy to share surveys, and to make a new survey by adding to or modifying a pre-existing survey template.

I also agree that it would be very helpful to know the answers of each user, especially when it concerns a closely monitored system.

Is there any estimate on whether this will be implemented and in which version?

I came across this project today (and I like it very much already). I plan on performing private surveys and I need to know the results of each user on multiple private surveys they answer so I can prepare the next surveys based on past results.

For my surveys there is no such thing as anonymity since the user already knows that it's a personalized survey and expects it.

I would appreciate if a developer added support for easy retrieval of user's answers (in order to use in following surveys and for export of user's profile).

I am willing to help the developer of this add-on (with my time and/or money).

Well, not that I'm begging for money or anything, but paid-for features get added first, if you know what I mean.

That's how mass-import/export of users, paged view of table results and mass-email fixes got added.

Rates are $20/hour.

But even without a paying customer, I will add these features eventually.

---John Holmes...

Please do you have a definitive list of the features that you are planning on releasing in the next version (1.8.2)?

e.g. Are the following in that version:

- Is the Answer Type of the following form:

Yes
No
Other: _____ [text box to fill in answer]

- Saving of interim results by user for whole form

Thanks for your help.

I just installed UCCASS. Excellent system!

However, like the other users who have been requesting this answer type since 2004, I really
like to see it implemented in the next version.

Thanks.

John, What would it cost to sponsor this module edit? How many hours between your studies would it take? contact joe at woodpress dot net with your reply. Thx

I also second that request (the import invitation one )

Oh, and great job John

I do have user/invitee import/export code complete, but have not made any progress on an "other" box for questions, unfortunately. The Army is rather busy these days, you know.

---John Holmes...

Today I installed this survey software. I really like it thanks Holmes. I have been reading from the beginning of this thread and found that u are working/worked on users self registration. Did it finish? I could not find this function on my install. Thanks mate

John -
First, thanks for the excellent job! I would be interested in two new features and wonder if you have considered either one. First would be an easy way to tailor the invitation eMail on a per survey basis (different surveys would send different messages)? Second would be a way to generate the invite codes without sending mail. An easy way to export the user list csv with their invite codes would be nice as part of that.

Finally, I would like to suggest that you add a donation page for people to donate to you via PayPal. I try to always contribute to open source projects that I use and having that link makes it easy.

/carmi

If you copy the Default template into another folder, say MyTemplate, you can go in there and edit the templates for sending emails. Then use the new template, MyTemplate, on the survey. You've got per-survey templates for the mails, then.

Assuming I can get the latest CSV version off of my water logged laptop hard drive, I'm pretty sure you can do this with the latest code. I know you can manually set invitation codes, too. I'll double check once I get my laptop back, though.

You can donate via the Sourceforge page here. It comes to me via PayPal, so I think you can donate via PayPal. You'll have to see if you want. 25% (my choice) goes to Sourceforge.net if you donate on the linked page or you can PayPal directly to JHolmes763 at bigredspark dot com.

I'm glad people are still finding the program useful even though I'm very, very slow in getting out new code.

---John Holmes...

That was easy. I never noticed that item until you mentioned it just now.



The easy templates above eliminates my need for CSV exporting of the invite codes, actually.



Thanks. Will do.

One other suggestion is to allow a question to be shown or hiden based on a negative condition. For example:

A Multiple Choice/Multiple Selection question is:

Did you try our:

Chicken
Hambugers
Hot Dogs

If a user checked that he had tried our chicken, ask:

How many pieces of Chicken did you eat?

If he did not check that, do no show the question.

Generalizing, basic boolean conditions would be useful (A and B, A and not B, etc.).

I hope there is not a simple solution that I just missed as there was with the templates. :-)

/carmi

That's what dependencies are for, but they do not support any complex logic. You can choose to HIDE a question based upon answers to previous questions. So in your example, you'd hide the "what kind of chicken" question if the user chose "Hamburgers" or "Hot Dogs" as their answer.

You can also conditionally REQUIRE a question based upon previous answers. The default action of a question is to SHOW it, but there is a SHOW condition that's useful for multiple choice, multiple answer (MM) questions.

---John Holmes...

I guess I was not clear enough.

Using my example above:

Did you try our:

Chicken
Hamburgers
Hot dogs


I want to have three questions:

How many pieces of Chicken?
How many hamburgers?
How many hot dogs?

Each of which I want to show up only if a user has selected that particular food in the first question.

I understand I can hide the question if a condition is met, but I can figure out how to hide a question if a condition is not met. So if he chooses Hamburgers and Hot dogs, but not chicken, I only want to show the other two. As far as I can tell this requires a NOT (hide if question 3 is Not chicken) other wise it will show it no matter what.

/carmi

Instead of saying "hide if not chicken", say "hide if answer is anything but chicken" and you can do what you're describing above with standard dependencies. You have to do it this way since the default action for questions is to SHOW.

If you say hide if answer is anything but chicken, then if one answers chicken and hamburgers, the question is not shown.

/carmi

Oh, you didn't say it was a multiple answer type question. In this case, you need to use the SHOW dependency. SHOW is only necessary for MM type questions.

So for the second chicken question, you'd want to HIDE if question 1 is Beef or Fish and SHOW if question 1 is chicken. Then if someone chooses chicken and beef, the second question for chicken will be asked.

---John Holmes...

Hi!

I would like to request a new feature here: The Question Type "Semantic Differential", meaning that people can say something about an Object (lets say eSports) and have two opposed words and can select their tendency in some sort of grades. basically meaning someting like this:



Well, I think you got the point. It was really a pain in the a** to rebuid that sort of behaviour using different answer types, because I had to create like 40 different of them. In a semantic differential always only one answer is checked. The only option that should be available for semantic differentials should be the number of grades that exist, meaning for example scales that go from 0 to 3, to 5, to 7 etc.

Greetings from Cologne,
Stalker.

PS: If I may help, don't hesitate to ask - I would really like to contribute to this great project.

For corporate training feedback surveys, there is a need to complete long surveys that seem to be 385 pages with 29 questions on every page and require at least 6 double espressos. That type of survey needs a way to let people start the survey, save the answer part way through, go get pizza or have children, return to the survey, complete another page, go visit their grandchildren, complete some more pages, look through the photographs of their great grandchildren, log in and do some more pages, have a hip replacement , then log in and finish the survey.

Some of those surveys could also benefit from a [Autocomplete by inserting random answers] button.

Feature request: break up long lists of questions (in the admin section) into chunks of 20 so that the page refreshes more quickly and is more easily navigated.

I'm thinking of a drop down menu of pages such as you see in phpMyAdmin when displaying a table with a few hundred lines. Gives you the option of viewing 30 at a time instead of all 300.

Thanks.
-al.

From the "Access Control" page, I'd like to see another function added to the list of Invitees. Currently, you've got Save, Delete, Invite, and Move.

How's about we get a "Remind" function in there, with a separate template that would send a message out to selected invitees that would be different text (in order to encourage them to take the survey), but would not change the password data, rather it would restate the same data from the "invite" template.

I could use that function right about now.

Thanks.
-al.

Feature request:

If the redirect of a finished survey is set to "view results", you could possibly show them in the template that you have chosen for the survey. Not the default template which is used by the admin section of UCCASS.