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Online surveys FAQ and Troubleshooting
How do I get people to respond to my survey and only respond once?
Send reminders! Each invite sent out is valid for one response to the survey. If you don’t get a response right away avoid sending a new invite. You could end up with each person responding twice - or more - and you will have difficulty in getting an accurate count of how many people have completed the survey. Instead use a reminder, as covered in the manual under the ‘Sending reminders’ topic.
Importing a contact list isn't working
1) Your file must have been saved in .xls or .csv format. If you’re using Excel, press ‘Save As’ and then choose ‘Excel 97-2003 Workbook.’ The 2007 .xlsx format currently isn’t supported so, if you are using Excel 2007 pay particular attention as it will save files as .xlsx by default.
2) All you need for your contacts is their first name, last name and email address. If there is more information in the file you are working with save a copy and remove the extra detail.
Invites aren’t getting though to people
Some email systems with more rigorous security may think that the email invites sent are unsolicited email, or ‘SPAM’ and they either block it or move it to one or more dedicated email folders. This is likely what is happening here. Perform an initial test invite. If the people you are attempting to survey don’t receive your invite (and can’t find it in their ‘SPAM’ or ‘Junk’ folders) you have three options:
1) Ask that their email administrator (the school IT person in the case of staff and students) to ‘white list’ the survey server’s IP address. The mail servers used are smtp.chide.it and smtp2.chide.it. Many email programs have similar options, such as ‘add sender to safe senders list’ your recipients can use individually.
If this isn’t possible (eg in the case of parents who might be using a variety of email services) try bypassing the problem:
2) You can use the survey system to generate each individual an invite code for your survey. You can then use your normal email to send them the link – or get it to them using any other method you decide on (eg printing it out or writing it on a piece of paper).
See the section of the user manual titled ‘Publishing surveys without an email invite’ for information on how to do this.
3) Failing all that, if it’s just one or two individuals you may wish to give them the surveys in printed form and enter the results in yourself.
See the section of the user manual titled ‘Adding responses’ for information on how to do this.
Some of my students don't have email addresses
1) You can use the survey system to generate each individual an invite code for your survey. You can then provide them the link by writing it down (although it’s laborious for a student to type out manually) or by copy & pasting the link into a document on the computer they will be using.
See the topic in the manual titled ‘Publishing surveys without an email invite’ for information on how to do this.
Tip: Export the codes to a CSV file (usable with Excel).
2) If it’s just one or two individuals you may wish to give them the surveys in printed form and enter the results in yourself.
See the topic in the manual titled ‘Adding responses’ for information on how to do this.
Can survey respondants share codes?
No. The codes must be unique to each person responding. People attempting to use the same code will just overwrite the previously submitted responses.