Concerning standardization across surveys.

[JHStarner]

Though this is a development question, it doesn't pertain to using the development kit (I don't think).

We are trying to develop a way to extract the answers from respondents directly into our database, so we don't have to extract CSV files or XML files and "massage" them into a format that our database will be able to read/upload.

I have already messed around with some of the Web Services using a SOAP Client, and have been successful at pulling out several templates for surveys we have created through the ourwebserver.checkboxonline.com web tools.

What I can tell from looking at the XML, everything auto-increments. The TemplateID of the survey (not the GUID), the ItemID (which I think corresponds to each individual question), the PageID (unknown), the OptionID (which I guess is the answer ID), and the ListID (which must be the string or information of the answer). I may have missed a few... Each one of these keeps going up and up and up in each survey.

Here is where my dilemma lies. Say I have Survey A and Survey B. Both are a customer satisfaction survey, with the exact same questions and layout, but Survey A pertains to Al's Toy Barn, and Survey B pertains to Bass Pro Shops. For example:

1. Was the service friendly: Yes or No
2. Did you find what you were looking for easily: Yes or No
3. How would you rate the cleanliness of the store: 1 to 5
(5 Clean, 1 Dirty)

These are questions you could ask of any retail shop. So why would the ID of the question need to be change?

Each survey will have two unique IDs, the Template ID and the GUID. Do I really need to worry about the rest of the IDs being unique outside of each survey? Can questions 1, 2, and 3 not be labeled ItemID 1, 2, and 3 for both surveys? And the same for the rest?

I ask because, if this can be done then the code I write on our end would be able to pull the data out for the response the exact same way each time, except it would change the TemplateID or GUID based on the selected store/client/survey? I would have a single template with which to key my information off of, instead of having to write code that changes the question and response IDs each time I extract a different company's survey.

Thanks in advance.

[ncushing]

The IDs of the questions are the unique, per-database identifier that Checkbox uses to look up the questions. Each question is it's own instance so that it can be modified without affecting answers to other surveys. At some point, we do plan to expand our library functionality to support questions that can be added "by reference", so to speak, so that you can have one "master" question and update it once to affect all surveys.

Assuming that all of your surveys are identical, you can use the positional information of the items to identify them as you planned, but that would be pretty fragile and would require re-coding any time a survey changed.

What you want to do is actually what our question Aliases were designed for. They provide a way to tag a question so that it can be identified when exporting data to external systems. For example, your sample questions could have specific aliases, such as "Friendliness", etc. You could then match questions between surveys based on these aliases.

[JHStarner]

Ok, so that solves the pulling of questions. Do the Question Aliases also allow for and alias of the answer? My 1 to 5 question above, the Question Alias would be "Cleanliness" I guess, but would I be able to make an alias that would pertain to the 1 through 5 answer? (I answer 1 because the place is filthy, so the alias would be "Cleanliness:1"?)

EDIT: I am are blockhead. Was able to log in and see the alias for each answer. I'll work with this, and comeback if I have anything else. Thanks

[James Alex]

Look at the questions this guy has been asking. Do you EVER do your own homework man.




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