What we've delivered recently
Text formatting
Users have told us that they value the ability to format the text in their survey, whether it is to add a bit of colour or to emphasise something important in the question. So, we’ve introduced text formatting for questions and have extended the formatting options in Notes.
You can now embolden, italicise, underline, add links and set a text colour using the new WYSIWYG editor for question text.
Expanding Answer Piping
Before Christmas, we introduced Answer Piping to Online Surveys v3, so that a respondent’s answer to a question could be piped in to the question text of a subsequent question.
We’ve been expanding on this feature so that answers can now be piped into Notes and we’re working on bringing it to the Final page at the moment.
Getting PDFs right
PDF downloads are something that users have let us know they really value, but they can be notoriously difficult to get right, particularly when the content they display is different for each download.
We’ve been listening to what our users have been telling us and have introduced new PDF downloads for the Analyse overview, Individual response, Benchmarking reports and for respondents to download their own answers.
We were really pleased with the response to our feedback survey about the usefulness and usability of the new Analyse overview PDF, which helped inform some tweaks to improve it further.
What we're working on now
A new-look Analyse Overview
Last year our UX team met with users to understand what areas and features of Online Surveys they thought could use improvement. One of the key takeaways was that users felt the Analyse Overview page could be improved, particularly the layout and format of charts.
Since then the team has been busy redesigning the Analyse Overview and our developers are almost done making the changes.
Some key improvements being introduced:
- More compact charts so more can be displayed on a page.
- Consistent bar widths and colours so charts are easier to read.
- Consistent bar ordering between horizontal and vertical charts.
- A redesigned pie chart.
- More room for labels on charts so there is less truncation of text.
- Display of percentages and counts on bars.
- Ability to expand and collapse charts with lots of answer options.
- More compact, less cluttered, free-text display.
- Chart image downloads.
- A redesigned PDF export.
Exploring features based on your feedback
As you’ll know, we’ve had to find a suitable time to retire Online Surveys v2 so that it doesn’t see out its golden years causing our users trouble. This meant that we wanted to provide access to Online Surveys v3 as soon as possible so users could begin to make the transition, and we’re really pleased lots of you have. But this also meant releasing Online Surveys v3 while still developing some key features.
Some users have asked for an Online Surveys v2 – Online Surveys v3 feature comparison so that they have clarity around what has been delivered, what hasn’t, and what the statuses of undelivered features are. You can view that from the link below.
SPSS export
In our recent survey 28% of participants said they value an SPSS (.sav) export for response data.
Response digest email
Our Customer Success team has fed back that this is a common request. Our UX team is currently undertaking design work so that we can introduce this feature and make it even better than the one in Online Surveys v2.
Grids
Some users have fed back that they miss the ability to design more complex grids. This is something we’re thinking about carefully, because big grids are just not very friendly on mobile phones, and half of survey responses are made that way now. But we are looking at solutions based on some of the use cases you’ve told us about.
Sharing your results
Online Surveys v2 had a more complex permissions structure than Online Surveys v3 that allowed users to filter their results and share that limited view with other users. This is a more advanced feature that was not the most used, but is valued greatly by some users. We’re investigating how we can simplify this feature but also provide more flexibility so that it will become a key feature for users in Online Surveys v3.
We’ll provide details of our progress through our News page.