Session Management

[MFriesen]

We're having a problem with Checkbox 4.2 where if an unrelated browser window is open it's affecting the use of Checkbox.

In this case we have an application prior to the survey that creates a registered user in Checkbox (as well as stores demographic answers) and then passes through to Checkbox with querystring parameters. At that point, if this is the first session, all is stored correctly in the responses table, but every subsequent submission is also stored against the first respondent even though new ones have been created and passed in.

For instance, let's say the survey URL was sent by email to a data entry clerk who will be entering a stack of paper copies. That user clicks on the link and it opens in a new window. They fill out the demographics, click to start the survey and fill it out to completion. They then close the browser, and start again by clicking the link in the email. For every subsequent response entered, a new registered user is created, but the response is stored against that first respondent's ID.

This problem is preventing us from using the demographic data we are storing outside of Checkbox.

Thanks for any insight.

[pwiesner]

Checkbox 4.2 is an outdated release of the product. The current release is Checkbox 4.5.3.55 and we are working on releasing 4.6 this month.

From your description it sounds like the clerk is resuming or editing the initial response. Depending on the survey's security settings it is possible that a cookie is being saved and used to identify the respondent. Alternatively it is possible that the URL being used to direct respondents to the site contains identifying information, such as a response id or user id.

What are the surveys security settings? Please include the URL being used to redirect respondents to the survey.

[MFriesen]

The application is set to Cookieless with Concurrent allowed.

The URL that is passed to Checkbox is concatenated on the fly, once a record has been added to ckbx_Credential. The guid stored there is passed back to our launcher application and is used as the userguid.

eg. http://www.domain.com/Checkbox/Surve...F-57F78392DBDD

[ncushing]

This reply may be a little late to help you, but the issue is likely caused by the fact the user login state was stored in the ASP.NET session for taking surveys. In recent versions of Checkbox (4.5 & later) we removed all session dependencies for taking surveys so your solution should work in the latest version of Checkbox, which would read the user guid from the URL each time you redirect back from your external system.