by Christopher Park

No doubt, as with many feature-rich applications, there is a learning curve that mandates you to simply sit down and use the tool over the course of a few weeks to fully appreciate and maximize what you can do with that application.  Whether it be Microsoft Excel (Which I ’still’ only use 5% of the options….if that!) or a new microwave oven, it’s human nature that we learn what we need to get the job done first and THEN discover new tricks and shortcuts later along the way.  That is, if we don’t break the application first…;-)  We continually have clients call from time to time excited about a new feature that they’ve just discovered but is of immense use to them.  We are pleased to see people get excited about these features, which have been included by popular demand, but would like them in their knowledge arsenal early on.

So over the coming weeks and months, we will present a list of features we’ve found most useful but our clients may perhaps be unaware.  That being said, let’s begin with one of my personal favorites:

Grouping Responses

One of the more useful (and powerful) features of Checkbox is an option I’ve not seen used frequently with our customer base.  It’s the ability of grouping open ended responses with other open ended responses to quickly categorize and associate names with answers.  This also saves the report viewer from tediously scrolling down the screen to view the potentially hundreds of responses line-by-line.  Consider the following report as an example of a non-grouped report:

http://salesdemo.checkboxonline.com/RunAnalysis.aspx?a=a1e89a7f-fe57-4a14-8fd6-2102564d4c17

Specifically, I wish to draw your attention to the responses that required the respondent to enter in free text:

As you can see, most of the report page consists of the extensive lists that the first name, last name, email address, and comments generate.  Also, it makes it difficult to identify, at a glance, who said what without opening another page – namely the Response Details page of the respondent.  With grouping, you can not only shorten the load time of generating the page, but make it easier to navigate and identify respondents with comments.  See below as an example:

This report can be viewed at the following URL:

http://salesdemo.checkboxonline.com/RunAnalysis.aspx?a=e92b3d32-0617-49dd-ab35-839f0d7708e9

Notice that the comments can now be seen alongside the email and the name of the respondent.  This certainly makes for an easier view for the administrator to quickly associate comments with the respondent.  Also, this cuts down the load time and the length of the web page dramatically.

We can do this by taking the following steps (note:  this assumes you have already built a survey, collected responses, and generated a report)

1. Click on the Report you wish to group responses
2. Click the ‘Edit’ option on the first open text item you wish to have grouped.  In this case it would be ‘First Name’.  This item should already be categorized as Response Details if you used the Report Wizard, but double check to make sure it is.
3. Hold down the <CTRL> Key and select the fields you wish to have grouped in the Source Items table.  Notice each survey item has a number attached to it – x.x….the first number signifies the page number, and the second denotes the item on that page.  So ‘4.2 First name’ translates to Page 4, second item on that page “First Name”.
4. Once you have selected the items you wish to have grouped, click the ‘>>’ button.  You should now see it in the box located on the right.
5. Here’s the important part:  Click on the Checkbox that states “Group Answers’.  It’s important you do this, otherwise it will list the responses individually, and not as a compact matrix.
6. Click OK.  That’s it!  Optionally, you may click on the “Link to Response Details” if you wish to see the respondents’ responses in its entirety.
7. Delete items on the report that you included in the grouping of responses.  Now that you have included other responses in this item, there’s no need to include them in the report as separate items.  So, for example, in this report I included the last name, email address and comments along with the first name, so I deleted the separate items last name, email address, and comments.
8. Run the report!  Click on the Run Report option or the link that is generated for your specific report located at the top of the page.

I hope this helps!  More info about Checkbox can be found at our live weekly webinars at:

http://www.checkbox.com/products/webinars.aspx

and be sure to check out our pre-recorded videos at:

http://www.checkbox.com/training/