Getting Started

UBC students, faculty and staff can create surveys using the UBC Survey Tool.

Use the following steps to get started:

Go to the Survey Tool Website and log in with your CWL credentials. This will automatically create an account for you. You will then be redirected to a home page with all the tool options on it.
In the top left corner click on the button named New Survey.
You will be presented with 3 options: Blank Survey, import from a FluidSurveys backup or use a professional template.
1. If you are creating a new survey from scratch, click on Blank Survey. This will ask you for a new title for the survey and the language you want it in (English by default).
2. If you have a previously created survey to use as a template, or you want to use a a backup file that was sent to you, click on Import from FluidSurveys Backup. You can then fill in a survey name, choose the language and select the backup file.
3. You can also use FluidSurveys pre-made templates as a starting point.

Surveys

Creating a new Survey

To create a brand new survey, choose the option to create a Blank survey as outlined above.

Once the survey is created, you can add elements by clicking on Edit in the top left corner. This panel shows options for adding questions, pages and editing survey details. To add questions, simply drag them into the survey and edit the question options. Click on the Save button as you make progress so as not to lose your questions in the event of a disconnection.

Basic Questions

Basic questions are the most commonly used questions on the survey tool and would satisfy the needs for most simple surveys. These include elements such as short text response, radio buttons, dropdown lists and checkboxes. To use a question type, drag it into the survey field and add details to it.

By default, FluidSurveys questions are set to be optional. This means that users won't have to put in an input for a particular question. To change this, click on the options tab and uncheck the optional button.

The display tab allows you to set question display options for individual questions only. Note that this does not allow you to customize the style of the survey page, for that there is a separate section for that. Instead, this tab gives you preferences such as displaying questions side-by-side, ordering list options, randomizing them to prevent bias etc. When choosing the display side-by-side option, be sure to preview the survey to make sure the appearance is acceptable. FluidSurveys is set up to be responsive and displays well on any device screen size by default. The side-by-side option overrides this and can make question layouts odd.

Advanced Questions

In some cases, simple questions cannot satisfy the needs of bespoke surveys or polls. In this case, advanced questions may provide more options such as picture uploads, matrices and ranking tools. Use these tools if you have enough experience with the Survey Tool and use caution with fields such as custom JavaScript injections. Any custom script should be extensively tested and screened before deploying to prevent unexpected survey behaviour and malicious data collection.

Customizing the Survey style

After adding all the questions and field details, you can customize the style of the form by clicking on the Style button.

A number of themes are available, the default ones follow UBC Common Look and Feel guidelines and are recommended for use for UBC units. Once you have selected a theme, click on the Save button at the bottom of the screen.

You can also create a New Theme on your own. This is quite time-intensive and some experience in graphic manipulation is necessary to achieve a responsive survey.

Deployment

Once you have set questions and customized the theme to your liking, you can deploy the survey by clicking on the Deploy button. The deployment status button will then be blue and the survey will be live. You can share the url with people who you will poll and you can even customize the url to a short and easily pronounceable one, to enhance sharing.

There are also many options in the menu for embedding the form in websites, sharing it to popular social media sites, enabling popups and carrying out testing.

Deploying in Kiosk Mode

If you are setting up the survey for a booth / information point whose sole purpose is to act as a survey interface, you can enable Kiosk Mode. This mode makes the survey refresh the loop back to an empty form a specified duration after it has been submitted. This means that if you switch it on and set it to 1 minute, the survey will loop to a blank one 1 minute after it has been filled out and submitted. This is useful to refresh the page between users and allow for a fully autonomous survey kiosk.

Invites

Sometimes you may prefer to share a survey within a specific group of people. This is useful if you want to limit responses to only that group and keep the survey confidential. For this, you can add all your group member contact details to the inbuilt address book.

The UBC Survey Tool allows you to compose custom messages with survey details for a large group of people. To do this, click on the invites button and edit the message to suit your needs. Each recipient can receive a customized survey link tied to their email address which prevents them from forwarding the email to others. Under the message composition space is a recipients space. You can add email recipients here using the following methods:

Add individual contact
Import contacts from a file (.csv or .xls)
Manually input contacts in bulk (similar to the bulk choice section when adding questions)
Add contacts from an already existing UBC Address book

If you intend to use the group of contacts continuously (e.g. over the academic year) you can then create a contact list by clicking the Contact Lists button beside the Add Contacts button. This allows you to name groups of people for future reference.

Statistics

The statistics section under invites is a powerful tool to track responses for your survey. It gives numerical data on how many invites were sent, how many surveys were viewed vs completed and completion rate with respect to time. This is useful for administrators to evaluate the effectiveness of the UBC Survey Tool for their needs and strategize how to get the best use for it in their respective departments.

Responses

The responses section in the bottom left corner shows the a table of all the responses for a selected survey. The UBC Survey Tool also collects metadata that your questions may not have asked. Examples of this include

Date and time completed
IP address
Email address (if sent via invite)
Location

And many more.

Most of this is not populated in the table to avoid cluttering your response view. To add these additional fields, simply click on the columns button at the top and choose the field you would like to display.

Responses can also be exported into the following formats:

CSV
XML
IBM SPSS
PDF
Word
Statwing

Reports

The UBC Survey Tool also has an inbuilt report generator engine. This tool allows you to graphically analyze responses based on tabulated information that the survey tool collects. The report feature can analyze survey responses, individual question responses and geographical location of users. It also shows a timeline to give administrators an idea of peak and trough times for responding to surveys after their release date. This can be a useful tool for statistical data collection and can aid in resource planning to make the distribution of services more efficient.

Sharing surveys with multiple administrators

The UBC Survey Tool allows you to share the back end of a survey with a group of administrators. This gives multiple people permission to change survey settings and analyze the responses. The permissions customization spans a large range from simply changing the theme to analyzing responses and editing questions. To give other administrators access to the survey, create a survey as outlined above and then follow these steps:

Click on the ubc button dropdown at the top right corner of the screen and select the groups option.
Click on the New Group button and give your group a name (this could be your department or unit name at UBC)
Once you confirm a group name, a configuration pane will open up on the right. In the members field, type in the name or email address of the person you want to share it with. Note that they must have already signed up for a UBC Survey Tool account and you have to use the email address they signed up with. A dropdown menu will show up suggesting the name of the person you want to add. It can take a minute to retrieve names from a directory so have patience, even if the form appears to be doing nothing.
Once you select a member to share with, a confirmation dialog will pop up, after which your new member will be added to the group. The member has now been assigned to the group but needs to be given roles / permissions.
To assign roles, click on a member and their row should be highlighted in blue. Click on the Member Actions button on the far right of the page and select Set Member Permissions. A dialog box will open with radio buttons that assign different levels of access. These are:
- Theme: User can edit themes.
- Distribute: User can add embeds, change embeds, delete embeds, view invite history and send invitations.
- Create: User can add collector, change collector, delete collector, change survey, copy survey, delete survey.
- Configure: User can publish survey.
- Analyze: User can add report, change report, delete report, add scheduled report, change scheduled report, delete scheduled report, add responses, delete responses, edit responses, export responses and view reports.
- Custom: User can take any of the subroles outlined above at the discretion of the administrator.
Click on as many boxes as needed and they will be highlighted in blue if active. Then click Set Roles to confirm. Repeat this step for all new members.
You have now defined a group, added users and defined their roles. The next step is to specify which surveys are to be shared with this group. To do this, click on the tab named surveys on the far right of the same page you are currently on. Click on the Add Surveys button and select the surveys you would like to share with your new group.

Members now have permissions to manage your survey in the roles picked at your discretion.

Polls

Similar to surveys but work more as a single question being asked. More details on this section to be added in future.