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Frequently Asked Questions:
Q) Does Our Web Survey support mandatory questions?
A) Yes. When you add a question, you have the option to make it
mandatory.
Q) Can I add my own scales as question types, if the one
I want is not present as standard?
A) Yes you can. There is a 'scale type' table, which you
can add to and modify as you wish.
Q) With scales and other 'list' type questions, is there
a 'free text' box 'other' option?
A) No, not directly. You can work around this by having
a second 'optional' question directly underneath the 'list' though,
with ' Other:' as the question.
Q) Does Our Web Survey support multiple surveys per site?
A) Yes absolutely, as well as multiple surveys per registered user.
Q) When paging, how is state maintained across pages? Does
it use sessions / cookies?
A) No. Cookies or sessions are not required for your surveys,
even if you have multiple pages. All state is maintained within
the pages themselves. Cookies are only required when logging on
for the designer etc.
Q) With the SQL Server version, what privileges do I need
to create the database?
A) As standard, we supply a database to 'restore' to make
it easy to create. You need sufficient administrator access to do
this. If you only have DB owner privileges, then we can provide
the DDL to run against an existing database (on request). All tables
and stored procedures have the prefix 'ows' to enable database space
to be shared with other application tables, if needed.
Q) Does our web survey support question rules, such as,
'if I answered yes to question 1, then I have to answer the next
two questions'?
A) No, rules are not supported. You can work around this
though, with appropriate wording and careful use of mandatory and
optional questions.
Q) How do I view my results?
A) You can view your results in two ways - by displaying all questions
in a table on the web page (one question per column with respondents
answers one per row) or export them to excel. You can view/export
results at any time, even whilst a survey is still published. No
reporting facility is provided for viewing results other than this
simple facility. See screenshots for
an example.
Q) Can I stop multiple submits by same the user (e.g. they
press the back button and submit again!) ?
A) Yes, simply set the 'Allow Multi Submits' flag in the
setup.inc file to false.
Q) What if I want the results to go to a different database,
other than the one supplied?
A) As it stands, the system writes to two database tables for all
responses. If you wish to write to your own bespoke database, you
would need to modify the data access layer, so that it inserts into
your tables instead. So yes, it is possible, but you would have
to modify the ASP code accordingly.
Q) Is there an evaluation version for me to download and
try?
A) Because Our Web Survey is written in ASP, once downloaded, all
source code is available to you, so we are not able to provide an
evaluation version.
Q) Can I alter the style, look and feel etc to match my
own web site?
Q) Yes you can. This can be achieved in two ways: a) changing header
text/logos in owsStyle table (supplied) and associated CSS files
and/or b) modifying ASP source code as needed. Option a) is preferred
as this does not invalidate technical support and future version
upgrade paths.
Q) Can I protect a survey I have created with a login?
A) No, not via the software itself. All surveys published are public.
Logins are needed for designing new surveys and system administration
only. You could protect your surveys via other means though (for
example, IIS authentication and NTFS security).
Q) Will it cost me to upgrade from version 1.2 to 1.3?
A) All products support free upgrades for 12 months from the date
purchased. Simply contact sales quoting
the date purchased, version and paypal reference number.
Q) I have just received my free upgrade from 1.2 to 1.3.
How do I upgrade my 1.2 installation?
A) Simply remove your old installation (including the relevant
database) and re-install, as per the installation guide.
Q) I have just installed the software but I am getting
"permission denied" messages.
A) This is down to access rights. You need to ensure the
web server (i.e. user accounts IUSR_ and IWAM_) have MODIFY access
to the directories where the mdb file (MS Access version only) and
error logs are stored. To set access rights, using Windows Explorer,
navigate to each relevant directory, right click, select properties
and select the Security Tab. You can now add the IUSR and IWAM accounts
to the user access list, giving MODIFY access. Note. If you are
using XP, to see the security tab you will need to go to Explorer's
Tools menu, select folder options, View, and then untick "use
simple file sharing".
Q) When I go to run Our Web Survey through the IE Browser,
all I get is a "Page Not Available" message. No other
details are shown.
A) This is the general "page not available" message
provided by IE. To see the "real" error message details,
go to IE's Tools menu, select internet options, advanced, then untick
"show friendly http error messages".
Q) I am getting an ODBC error message when connecting to
the database?
A) Our Web Survey does not use ODBC for database connections.
It uses the more efficient OLE DB approach. Simply modify the sample
OLE DB connection string provided in setup.inc.
Known Issues with vs1.2
Survey "Response" field length
Free text survey response field lengths are limited to
255 chars in the database, and if a response is over this length,
it will result in a "page not available" error. You can
increase the Answer field length in owsResponseAnswer
table to work around this - you may need to change the data type
to MEMO (MS Access) or TEXT (SQL Server) accordingly, where applicable.
Fixed in version 1.3.
Known Issues with vs1.3
There are no known issues.
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