Creating a Report: The basics
SurveyGizmo is a great tool for gathering data from your customers, clients and other contacts. But having that information won’t do you much good if you can’t quickly and easily summarize it. That’s where the Summary Report comes in.
Creating a report is a two-step process. First, you define the options and questions to include. Second, you run the report. Reports need to be rerun when new responses come in after your initial report creation.
Step 1: Navigate to the Reports tab
While editing a survey, click the Reports tab. Then, under Available Report Types (on the right side of the page), click Summary Report.
Step 2: Name the report
Now you’re ready to name your report. At the top of this page:
- Type the desired name in the Report Title box. Keep in mind that you can generate filtered reports based on respondent answers (we’ll cover how to do that in another tutorial), and you may want the report name to reflect a filter. For instance, if you want to generate a report of all the respondents from Colorado who took your survey, you might name it “Customer Satisfaction Survey – Colorado Customers.”
- OPTIONAL: Choose a date range of responses that will be included in the report. Enter the date in the form of m/d/yyyy in each date box. (Note: the dates are US-formatted.) If you leave this section blank, the report will include all the data the survey has collected up to the point you run the report.
Step 3: Choose which questions to include in the report
The Questions list is just below the title and date boxes. SurveyGizmo lets you choose which questions you want to include in a report. If you’d like to include all the questions in the report, do nothing. By default, all questions are checked.
But, if you want to exclude a question, simply click the checkbox to the left of a question to remove its checkmark. Questions you don’t include in the report will appear grayed out.
At this point, you may be wondering about the Responses and Graph Type column on the right. These icons indicate how data will be summarized for each question, and we’ve chosen the most effective way to display data summaries based on question type.
{AccountDetails(plan3,name);} and {AccountDetails(plan4,name);} accounts can change graph types, filter reports, and configure other question options.
Step 4: Configure what gets included in the report
You’re almost done; you have just a few more decisions to make.
- Create an Appendix of Essay responses by question
Open-ended questions, such as text and essay questions, cannot be summarized or graphed. Plus, they can make reports very long. By default, SurveyGizmo leaves these questions out of a report. If you’d like to include open-ended questions in your report, you must check both the question in the list and the box called “Create an appendix of essay responses by question” under the Options section. - Display Question Option Titles (rather than report values)
It’s useful to have report values (a, b, c, etc.) for exporting and importing information, but when viewing a report, those values typically don’t make a lot of sense. If you want the question option titles to appear in the report, select this option. - Create an Appendix of Contact Group information
Another question type that’s difficult to summarize in a report is contact information (name, city, state, etc.). SurveyGizmo’s report tool gives you the option of creating an appendix of contact information. If you’d like to include contact info, you must check both the question in the list and the box called “Create an appendix of essay responses by question” under the Options section. - Just show percentages in table question & ranking summaries
When you include a table question or ranking summary question in your report, checking this option means the report will display percentages in the report but not the total number of responses given for each question option.
- Do not include ‘N/A’ answers in calculated percentages
With this option selected, graphs that display percentages — such as pie charts — will not include respondent answers of “Not Applicable.” - Round percentages to the nearest whole number
Percentages are rounded up or down to the nearest whole number. (Eg: 14.6 % becomes 15 %, while 14.2 % becomes 14 %.)
- Include “Partial Responses”
You need to decide whether to include partial responses (data from respondents who did not complete every page of a survey). Sometimes you’ll take what you can get and you would rather have as many answers as possible. If so, check this option. - De-dupe responses by IP address (vote protection)
Selecting this option means that the first survey response from a particular IP address is included in the report, but subsequent responses from that same IP address are left out of the report.
Step 5: Run the report
Ready? Okay, go for it. Click the Run Report button at the bottom of the page.
The report is now being built. Short reports run rather quickly, while lengthy reports may take several minutes. During this process, you will see the % Completed on the main reports page. You may work on another SurveyGizmo page while the report finishes.
Step 6: Working with your report
When the report is ready, click the View button. The report opens in a separate window/tab in your Web browser.
Congratulations – you’ve created a basic report, which has its own, random URL. You can share this URL with co-workers without being logged in to SurveyGizmo. But, of course, we don’t recommend you send it to anyone you don’t want to see the report. (If you do, you can always delete the report.)
IMPORTANT NOTE: A report captures any data collected up to the point when you run it. In other words, the report is a snapshot of data at a moment in time. It shows only responses collected up to the point it was last run. If you want to update the report to include new responses, simply click “Rerun.”
33 Comments
Hi AG,
Reporting for partial responses is only available on Personal, Professional and Enterprise accounts.
However, there is still a way to report on that data! You can go to Reports->Data Options and select “Close Partial Records” which will convert your partial responses into “complete”. Once you do that they can be reported on! :)
-Christian
Can the reports show each individual reply?
Basically I’m setting up a website for a sports team and I want to set up polls for each tournament and ask who is available. Therefore having a report that responds “64% can play, 36% cannot” is no good for me I need to be able to tell which individuals can. Can Survey Gizmo do this?
Hi Luke!
Yes. You can read every response individually through the browse responses screen. You can also record comments, edit and delete individual responses.
Hope that helps!
-Christian
Hi Christian,
To further the question from Luke, would it be possible to download in excel a sheet with all individual responses?
Thanks!
Sean:
Actually, yes! We call it a CSV download (it’s on of excel’s formats) and it includes all the fields, url variables, and response information for every question per response.
-Christian
I created a report for a survey. I then created an account for an executive to review the survey and set permissions to only run or edit reports for that survey. How do I give that account access to the report I created? When he logs in, it says “You have not created any reports for this survey.”
Hi Al,
The issue is that reports are locked to the user that created that report. The reason we did this is so that in accounts with 20+ users where each user creates 5 reports don’t get clogged with 100 reports.
We just added a feature that allows you to either release the report (all users can view it) or claim a report (only you can see this report). To get to this just modify the report go to Options and select either “Make this Report available to all users” or “Make this Report mine (no other users can see this report)”
Hope this helps!
Chad
could the report be a web link that I can send to anyone interested to see?
Hi, Gretchen.
Yes, each report is a unique URL. You can send people to the URL to see the results of your survey.
Keep in mind that you will need to update the report URL where you send people every time you run a new report.
Enterprise customers can also embed reports in a webpage and set up a schedule to regularly update the reports automatically.
–Cheri
Could I somehow email or show individual results to each survey taker as soon as they finish their survey? I’d like for each person to see his/her results.
Hi Robin,
Absolutely!
On the thank you page click on ‘Add Action’ then choose our Send Email action.
This lets you create an auto responder than can go to the survey taker — with a completely custom message (and the answers they provided in the survey).
Let us know if you have any questions!
Cheers,
-Christian
Thanks, but can we send the current summary report to the survey they just took as well?
Hi,
I have 3 questions:
1) Can the data in the bar graphs be re-ordered by question type, rather than percent answered?
2) I know you can delete the number of responses, but is there a way to delete the percent responded instead?
3) Is there a way to re-order the text responses to not be as an appendix, but in the body of the report? This way the survey results will be in the same order as the questions were on the survey.
Any advice you can provide would be helpful. Thanks!
Hi Jim,
We just developed an Enterprise feature that allows you to embed reports on a webpage, for example in the Thank You page of a survey. You can also have the reports Auto-rerun on a scheduled basis, hourly/daily/weekly/monthly. In this case you’d want the report to run hourly.
Hope this helps,
Chad
Hi Coleen,
Unfortunately you cannot reorder the bar graphs. This is something we are considering adding in the next update of reporting. I’m not sure what you mean by ordering the graphs by question type. Do you mean you want all radio button questions to be reported on together? If so that will end up being a different report all together.
I’m also confused when you say “delete the percent responded instead” could you elaborate?
Finally, you wouldn’t really want to put the text responses into the actual report then it wouldn’t be a “summary” report.
Besides if you have thousands of responses that would be a very long report!
We are planning on releasing a Profile Report. This will report on data by response instead of trying to summarize the data.
Hope this helps,
Chad
Hi Chad,
Thanks for your quick response.
For question 1, I meant if we have responses for a question such as: How useful was the training? And the radio options are Not at all Useful, Somewhat Useful, Useful, Very Useful and Extremely Useful, it would be nice if the bar graph reflected this order, instead of a decreasing order by response (meaning the actual graph says: 15 Very Useful, 5 Useful, 5 Extremely Useful, 3 Somewhat Useful and 1 Not at all Useful.) But it sounds like I can’t reorder the bar graphs anyway.
For question 2; we have a table that lists the percent responded and quantity of people who responded to a particular question. In the options section of the report, there is a way to only display the percent of people who responded (and thus delete the quantity of people who responded). Is there a way to reverse that option, and show only the quantity of people who responded and not the percent responded? I think the problem is because when I take out the N/A responses, it is somehow still being calculated in the percents of the other responses, so the data looks odd.
Question 3; ok it makes sense.
Thanks again for you help!
Hi Coleen,
#1: Yes, we’re talking about ways to allow users to customize the graphs. Unfortunately, it’s a difficult process. Sorting would be nice but it’ll only allow you to sort on alphabetical or numeric since it would be very difficult for us to tell the order Very Useful/Useful etc.
The other option would be to let the user decide the order but this can get tedious and messy if they have hundreds of questions with 20+ options.
Any suggestions you have would be greatly appreciated.
#2: Currently there isn’t a way to reverse that option, but it’s something we can add.
If you filter out all the N/A options they shouldn’t be included in the percentage. Could you confirm that this is true? If so, we’ll jump on it.
Thanks,
Chad
Hi Chad,
I’ll keep thinking about #1. I chose a “star” question for one of my questions and it seemed to sort the responses in numerical order on the report. I gave the Very Useful/Useful question numeric values to each of the Very Useful, Useful, etc. response options, but that didn’t seem to change their order on the bar graph.
For #2, when I check or uncheck the “Do not include ‘N/A’ answers in calculated percentages,” my percentages do not change. Is there another way to filter out the N/As?
Hi Coleen,
Yes, currently the graph will try and graph the data based on the option that got the most responses. This is something we need to improve.
For #2 that option will only work under certian circumstances of N/A ex. n/a, N/A, Not Applicable.
You can also create a filter. In the Summary Report under Filters click “Add Filter” and you can select the question that has the N/A value, select the operation “does not equal” and select the N/A option.
Hope this helps,
Chad
There is no facility for compiling and printing an individual report option showing on my personal account - should there be?
How do you cut and paste from the survey gizmo reports into my own word docs? Some graphs will drop and drag but not tables.
Guidance welcome.
Hi, Ann.
You can access individual responses under Reports>Browse Responses. An individual report, or Profile Report, is not currently available but will be included in our reporting upgrade now in the works.
It would be nice, but unfortunately, data in tables will not drag and drop. To get that information, use the Export Data>Export to text on the Reports page. Then you can manipulate the information into tables via Excel.
I hope this helps!
I am new to SurveyGizmo, but my company has used it for years. I am trying to create a ‘test’ survey to show my Manager my abilities but after getting 3 pages done, I previewed it and now canot seem to edit anymore. I also want to change the title - but obviously I cannot do that if I cannot edit. Any ideas?
Hi, Diane.
We can’t seem to duplicate the error you are experiencing. Could you please close your browser, login and try it again. If you are still having problems, let us know and tell us which browser you are using. Also, has the administrator of your account changed your permissions? This could affect what you are able to do.
Is there a method that I can send the results through e-mail? for ex: I created two application forms and I wanted to send the information on the forms to one of my colleagues. I also noticed that the Reports only do averages and summaries. Is there a way I can collect the information and get a report of what each user entered, rather than the average answers, etc.,
Hello Sabelo,
There are ways to accomplish what you’re after. The easiest way is to add an email auto-responder to the last page of your survey. The email can go to both you and your colleagues and include all the questions and answers for each respondent.
You can also have summary reports automatically emailed to you and your team. It would also be possible for us to build you a custom report that contained the data in the format you were looking for and have that emailed to you.
Please contact sales with more questions 800-609-6480 ext 1.
Thanks
Scott
Sabelo,
In addition you at the Pro level you get PDF versions of each response. That makes it really easy to email a specific response to a colleague. Particularly if you don’t want to give them access to your account.
Hope this helps!
Cheers,
-Christian
How do I save a report as a word document?
Hi, Bronwyn.
Pro and Enterprise accounts save your reports as Word, PDF and Excel documents.
–Cheri
I have included a ranking question in our survey. On the final/results page, we need to repeat the user’s response. How do I accomplish that?
Hi Julie,
You can just include the merge code for that ranking question in the descriptive text (the thank you message) on the Thank You page.
This is made easier by using the Simple Merge Helper found below the question title.
Hope this helps,
Chad
First, SurveyGizmo is great!
But how do we diagnose the large # of abandoned surveys? The free version counts them but there’s no other info.
Thank you,
Bob
Hi Bob,
Great! Glad you like our software.
At the free level there is no way to diagnose abandoned responses. At the Enterprise level you can export your abandoned data, this includes, Start time, IP address, Geo tracking data, and any url variables that were attached.
Hope this helps,
Chad
My ‘reports’ screen doesnt allow me to include partials in my reports or analyses.