Behind the scenes, our new user management system works very similarly to the old system – but on the front-end, we’ve added new features and completely revamped the user interface to give you much more control and make it easier to manage teams of users than ever before. Here’s a run-down of some of the changes:

Users, Teams & Roles

Under our new system, you have access to the same number of users and teams as you had previously. However, you’ll notice a few big changes when managing users:

Roles

The biggest change you’ll notice is a new feature: Roles. Roles are a specified set of user permissions that allow you to quickly give the correct level of access to a user. Want to allow someone to run survey reports, but not to create and launch surveys? Set their role to “Reporter” and you’re done. Want to limit someone’s role to testing surveys? It’s already built-in.

In addition to managing the default roles, you can also create as many custom roles as you need to meet your needs, and apply them to people across your organization.

We think roles will make it much easier to manage user access throughout your organization.

Learn more about managing Teams & Roles »

Team Managers

In addition to the global Account Adminstrator, we’ve also created a Team Manager position.

The Team Manager can access all surveys their team is working on, as well as manage user permissions for their team. This should make the Account Admin’s job a little easier, as they won’t be the only person who can give users additional access when needed.

Learn more about Survey Team Managers »

Users can be on Multiple Teams

Users can now be placed on more than one team! This means that someone with a cross-team role in the “real world” can easily access surveys for all the teams they work with.

Learn more about our new User Permissions features »

Other Team Management Changes

We’ve also made some tweaks to the interface to make it easier to manage your users:

• Avatar Support – Users can now select avatars to represent them in the app. If your users wish to have custom avatars, they can associate a Gravatar account with their SurveyGizmo profile.
• Screen Names – You can assign screen names to users to help you keep better track of them.
• Team Names – Go ahead. Name your team anything you want. We’re cool with that.
• Team Colors – Administrators can assign teams different colors, which will apply globally to help you more easily know what team a user or survey belongs to on first glance.

Learn more about the User Management interface changes »

So when will this happen?

To see these new changes, all you have to do is login to your SurveyGizmo account. The new user management features will exist in all multi-user accounts beginning the morning of February 2nd, 2012.

The new user management system includes changes often requested by our users, so we’re excited to hear what you think! We think it’ll make it considerably easier to manage users in both small and large-scale organizations.

Want more information?

We’ve created an in-depth set of User Management System Tutorials to help you get going. Check them out for a detailed explanation of all the new features!

The topic was political. The purpose seemed to be to poll the opinions of voters. As I first answered the call, I hesitated to continue, but given that I’m in the survey business I went forward. (I usually try to participate in surveys at least until my patience runs thin.)

There was a slight introduction asking if I was registered to vote, etc., but not much else. The survey robot seemed friendly but clearly refused to laugh at any of my jokes. (That should have been a clue.)

I answered the first few survey questions without much trouble. All required Yes-No responses. Questions like: “Did you vote in the last election?” “Do you think Boulder’s City Council is doing a good job?” Then things started to get more involved. Soon there was a question I couldn’t answer without some thought. “Hmmm, I’m not sure,” I said. The robot responded, “This question requires a ‘Yes’ or a ‘No’ answer.” I hesitated again, not knowing how to answer and the robot seemed to get annoyed, replying, “This survey will end unless I receive a ‘Yes’ or a ‘No’ answer.” Suddenly, I panicked. “Yes,” I said.

Whew! That seemed to calm down the robot and the survey continued with a few more questions before there was another for which my real answer was not “Yes” or “No.” It was probably something like, “I’m not sure” or “I haven’t decided yet” or “It depends” or “I don’t understand the question.” Once again the robot insisted, “You must answer ‘Yes’ or ‘No’.” As I tried to explain to the robot why I couldn’t answer “Yes” or “No,” the line went dead and I assumed that meant the survey was over.

Lots of Questions

As I hung up the phone, a host of questions rattled through my head:

• How do the survey sponsors expect to use the data from a survey like this?
• Do the sponsors really think the data they get is unbiased?
• Who writes these surveys, anyway?
• Do the survey authors really think it doesn’t matter what frame of mind people are in when they respond to their survey? Do they even think about that?
• Do the survey authors really think all of their survey questions only have the possibility of a Yes-No response?
• Do the survey authors really think that a respondent’s true feelings, opinions, and attitudes are like items on a shelf, ready for a robot to pick up and put in a box?
• What were they really trying to do with their survey?
• Isn’t it likely that the analysis of the data will ignore the method and circumstances under which the data were collected?
• Will the survey authors give any thought to the data’s validity? Or will the survey data instantly become meaningful (in their minds) once they see numbers or graphs on a page?

That is a lot of questions that went through my mind in the few seconds it took me to put down the phone.

The Mistakes This Survey Made

Clearly, mistakes were made in putting this survey together. I think it would be instructive to go back to my last article, the 10 Common Mistakes Made When Writing Surveys, and see which mistakes from the list were made here.

Let’s take a look. Here’s my list of the common survey mistakes:

1. Having little or no understanding of the target audience
2. Providing multiple choice lists that are too restrictive
3. Requiring answers to all questions
4. Asking too many open-ended questions
5. Using ranking questions incorrectly, or overusing them
6. Asking unnecessary questions*
7. Asking too many questions*
8. Asking two questions in one
9. Making questions too general
10. Putting too little thought and planning into writing the survey, period.

(I’ve bolded the ones I think the authors of the robotic survey made. The ones with stars are the ones about which my premature exit from the survey preclude me from making a clear determination.)

Items 1-3 and 9 are all closely linked. The authors’ understanding of their target audience seems minimal because they didn’t allow for more response choices and the choices they did provide were too restrictive, even to the point of requiring every question to have a “Yes” or a “No” response. The survey questions become too general from the restrictive responses.

The end result of these four mistakes is mistake number 10. The authors did not put enough thought into who would answer the survey, how their survey method would affect the response, and how the information was to be used.

Happy Survey Taking! I’ll talk about the other survey I attempted to take in my next blog post.

Photo courtesy of Jonty Wareing – Flickr, Creative Commons (Attribution)

Designing online surveys is tricky business. True story. And in the rush to get a survey out the door, it’s easy to lose sight of the needs of the people taking your survey. So here are a few key ways to make sure your online surveys aren’t exhausting your respondents.

1) Don’t over-survey.

In this day and age, it seems like everyone is surveying – from grocery stores to conferences to people on the street with clipboards (or in more and more cases, iPad surveys).

Now don’t get us wrong – we’re all in favor of more people doing research – but it does present an interesting survey fatigue challenge. Before you even think about survey design, you need to be sure that:

1. you’re not overloading your respondents with surveys, &
2. you’re not getting lost in the shuffle.

To be sure your respondents don’t get tired of seeing your requests, keep close track of what surveys your organization is running. If a potential respondent gets requests from your department and another department in one day, it could reflect badly upon your brand. Additionally, if you send out surveys often, it helps to set up a schedule so you don’t ask the same respondent to take one of your online surveys every week/month/etc.

2) Communicate everything.

The more effectively you communicate with your respondent, the better they feel about giving you their time! At the start of the survey, you should give them some background info to set their expectations:

• Why are they taking the survey
• How long will it take?
• Number of questions
• What will happen to their information (e.g., what’s your privacy policy)?

You should also think about communicating more throughout the survey and beyond. Consider communicating the survey results to your respondents during the survey – feedback loops can give a great sense of accomplishment to the survey-taker.

Later, you can show your respondents they made a difference by promoting what actions you took based on the data you gathered (e.g., a “You asked – we listened” campaign).

The key is that this call for communication doesn’t mean communicate more – it just means communicate better.

3) Go easy on your respondents.

In addition to communicating, you should also make the survey as easy as possible for your respondents to take. When you’re asking for someone’s help, it’s bad form to make them jump through multiple hoops.

A great way to make your respondents feel engaged is by keeping your surveys relevant to them. One great way to do this is by using skip logic and page jumping to eliminate questions that don’t relate to them.

You can also reach a wider audience by delivering your survey on mobile devices, or making your survey more accessible.

4) Ask the right questions.

We’ve recently blogged about survey question choices – and the notes from that blog post apply here as well. As you design your survey, you should ask yourself if every question is absolutely necessary. If it isn’t, get rid of it.

When designing surveys, it’s easy to fall into the “me, too” trap – including survey questions because you saw someone else include them on a similar survey, and it seemed like a good idea (lists of demographics questions are particularly bad for this).

If you feel compelled to do this, STOP. Before you do, ask yourself if the question will give you additional, actionable data. If yes, go ahead and add it. If not, you’ll do better leaving it out.

Lastly,

5) Put yourself in their shoes.

Online survey design is a tricky thing. You have to balance the needs of lots of different parties – the stakeholders, yourself (the survey creator), and the survey respondents themselves. It can be a tricky juggling act.

The stakeholders tell you they want actionable data. You want to get a good sample size and as much survey data as you can collect.

But without your survey respondents, you won’t have any data to work with in the first place. So it’s up to you to figure out what it is they want – and give it to them.

Do that, and both you and the stakeholders will be happy.

**Need someone to review your survey and improve its user experience? Our Professional Services team can help!

Image courtesy of G Meyer – Flickr, Creative Commons (Attribution)

Firstly, they told me that SurveyGizmo Customer Support rocks, rocks some more, and finally– it rocks! We love to hear when SurveyGizmo Support impresses you, since we work hard to be among the best in the business. So, thank you! In the same vein, I believe we could always be doing more to empower users with our online support, so we will look forward to everyone’s feedback as we continue to enhance our online tutorial system.

Secondly, it wasn’t widely known among the meetup participants that we offer Professional Services. Our Professional Services are for those of you who’d like a Survey Project built for you, or for those who have a survey software need not currently being met by our other plans. We can build your surveys for you, create custom reports, scripts, & question types, and integrate with in-house or third party systems. Learn more about our Professional Services here, and fill out a SurveyGizmo Professional Services Request to get a quote for your project.

It was great to see everyone that came out, we look forward to seeing you again soon. Lastly, if you ever get to the Grafton Street Pub, be sure to try their Toasted Chickpea Burger with yogurt and cucumber sauce; I highly recommend it!

So what’s so cool about Majed’s survey? Well, he is catering to an Arab audience and needed to be able to get his text to read from right to left  and have everything written in Arabic fonts.  You’re probably thinking this is going to take him hours and hours of work and he’s pretty much out of luck.  Not to worry! SurveyGizmo can do both of these things with just a few changes to the CSS.  Because we give you the ability to go into the CSS and change things in your survey, all Majed had to do was add a single line to his CSS code and viola! And as for writing in Arabic as long as Majed’s keyboard was set to type Arabic, SurveyGizmo supports displaying the foreign characters properly. How cool is that!?!  Below are a few screen shots of Majed’s beautifully designed and easy to complete survey.

Majed also added some pretty cool show/hide triggers for the questions so his survey takers stay on the same page but only see one question at a time (so as not to overwhelm them). Nice job Majed!

Now let’s check out a survey Jeremy Feinstein from Empsight.com created.  Jeremy had a problem- he needed high level managers to fill out a questionnaire about their employees, but when he created an Excel spreadsheet and handed it out previously, he got a very low response rate.  This time he created it using SurveyGizmo’s Custom Group question type.  This allowed him to add various drop-down and checkbox questions to make a very professional (and much cooler than Excel) looking questionnaire. He also added some show/hide checkboxes at the bottom that allowed the survey takers to dynamically display instructions or job descriptions only when they needed to, without overwhelming them with all the information at once. Check out some screen shots of his survey below!

Setting User Permissions in SurveyGizmo

User permissions are available for all Enterprise and Dedicated Accounts. (These are our two account levels that allow more than a one user.)

To create a new user, click on your account management link in the upper right side of your screen. It will take you to a brand new page that looks like this:

Click on the Users tab (circled above). This is how you can access all of your users for resetting passwords, changing email addresses, etc.

Now, you’ll see a screen like this:

This works like an excel sheet. Simply edit the information you need to change. You can select the trash can icon to remove a user.

By default, all users have full account access (except new users are not given administrative access). To change this, click the clipboard icon next to the user. This brings up a detail screen shown below:

This screen is very simple. Select as many permissions as you want; the options are:

Can Edit/Create Surveys & Clear Responses
This option allows the user to create/copy/delete surveys. It also allows the user to upload images & files to the file library. It includes the ability to test surveys — obviously!).

Can Preview/Test Surveys
This option allows the user to preview/test surveys, but they cannot access data collected or modify the survey in any way. They do not have permission to launch a survey.

Can Launch/Close Surveys
This option allows the user to launch a survey and schedule it in a feed. It also allows the user to close the survey (stop taking responses) manually.

Can Create, Edit & Launch Email Invites
This option allows the user to upload a list of email addresses and invite people to take a survey. It does not include access to reporting by default, but they can see which people responded to the invite and send follow-ups.

Can Create & Edit Reports and Clear Responses
This option allows the user to create, modify and run reports. They can export data and create filter sets. These users can also edit & delete responses (in order to clean up data for reporting).

Can View & Re-Run Reports
This provides very limited access to surveys. It allows the user to login and view reports created by other users — but they cannot create new reports themselves. This access level cannot export data.

Account Administrator
This does not give access to everything as it might imply. Instead, it gives the user access to the account management page. There they can reset passwords (and permissions) and update account management “stuff,” like 3rd party software integration and API keys.

Survey-Specific Permissions
This is a nifty permission. Setting this will limit the user’s access to just a single survey — no matter what other permissions they have. They will not see other surveys at all — even on the main survey list. For Enterprise customers, you can select multiple surveys. Note: If the survey is in a different team, the user will not be able to see the checked survey unless they are in the same team or the survey is set to ‘All Teams’. Furthermore, this option supersedes team permissions (Enterprise), further restricting the user to view only the surveys checked that are in their team, and not any surveys in their team that are not checked.

Teams – Enterprise & Dedicated Level Accounts

Users within your SurveyGizmo account can be assigned to a specific team number or assigned to the Admin/All team, which grants them access to all surveys, regardless of which team the survey is assigned to. This does not grant the user access to Account Settings; it only applies to teams.
Surveys can be assigned to individual teams (visible only by members of that team or Admin/All) or assigned to ‘All Teams’, making them visible to all teams and users that are not restricted by other methods (see above: Limit access to the following surveys).
This feature is great for departments within an organization and reduces the need to micro-manage survey permissions. When surveys are created by a member of Team 1 for instance, the survey is automatically assigned to Team 1.

Keep giving use feedback and suggestions to make SurveyGizmo better. Happy Surveying!