Where is My Interview?

This page is summarizing information that may help resolve the issue of the user not being able to find interviews. All of the below situations were encountered in practice while troubleshooting users’ reports of “Data loss” (no matter how absurd they may sound).

None of the situations described below constitutes a defect or a bug, as in these cases data is not lost by the system itself, but rather it is erased as a result of a specific and predictable action by the user.

Browser requirements

The online components of Survey Solutions software (Designer, Web Tester, Headquarters, Web Interviewer) work with any modern web browser: Chrome, Safari, Firefox, Microsoft Edge.

Microsoft Internet Explorer of any version is neither recommended nor supported at this time.

Security review results

We are constantly on the lookout for new threats and periodically issue patches for any detected vulnerabilities that have a proven potential to be exploited to intercept data or intervene into the operation of the system, notably, our recent release 21.06.

Our security policy is located here. The inventory of currently reported security advisories is published here.

Users may conduct their own security analysis and share with us. We do not provide these reports on request of third parties.

Instructions for the Translators of the Survey Solutions Interface

• You receive a single Excel file and these instructions. You deliver just the translated Excel file.
• Do not rename the spreadsheet. Do not convert to any other file format.
• Translate text from column E (titled INVARIANT) to column F (titled with your language).
• If you can’t translate the original text for any reason, the translation should be left blank (do not copy text from column E to column F in this case).
• Do not modify any other text/cells anywhere else in the spreadsheet, even if there is a typo in the original text (feel free to notify about any discovered typos or problems in your email message, but not in this file).
• Do not add or remove any lines.
• Do not distort the HTML tags, such as: <br/>
• Do not touch anything inside the curly brackets {}, for example "{value}" must remain "{value}" , do not translate the word “value” inside the curly brackets.
• Some texts may contain terms in dual curly brackets {{}}, for example "{{count}} interviews will be approved.". Maintain the nesting in the translation. Do not reduce to {}.
• The translation MUST HAVE all the same entries {0}, {1}, … as the original! (If there were three in the original, must be the same three mentioned in the translation). The order of mentioning may be changed, however, for example: “File {0} may not be sent to {1}” –> “May not sent to {1} the following file {0}”
• The meaning of placeholders {0}, {1} may only be guessed from the texts. The same placeholder may be mentioned several times in the message, for example: "{0} is wrong, enter any other value than {0}!". In which case {0} means the same thing and it must be mentioned AT LEAST ONCE in the message, but for convenience MAY BE mentioned more than once.
• Messages may contain text that shouldn’t be translated, for example: “Optionally can specify the following columns:<br/> _responsible - username of a headquarters, supervisor or an interviewer who will be responsible for the assignment;” In this case the text "_responsible" is a specific column name and must remain the same word in any translation. Same applies to:
  • emails: e.g. someone@mysurvey.solutions;
  • web addresses: https://designer.mysurvey.solutions (do not translate each word);
  • file extensions: .pdf, .zip, .xlsx, .dta, .sav, etc;
  • names of programs: Stata, SPSS, Survey Solutions;
  • terms that are internationally known under English abbreviation GPS, UTF-8, Unicode, etc.
• You may decide to translate units Kb, MB, GB, or keep them in English, whichever is more prevalent/intuitive.
• Pay attention to details. There may be very similar terms with minute differences.
• The terms questionnaire, interview, and assignment mean different documents in Survey Solutions and the difference must be maintained in the translation.
• The terms interviewer and enumerator mean the same thing in Survey Solutions. Translators may opt to use a single term do denote either.
• You may want to refer to the glossary online to double check the meaning of some of the terms as we apply them.
• Use of quotes: different languages have different conventions to quote the text. In some places (such as in HTML tags: <font color=“red”>No internet connection</font> ) specifically the unicode quotation mark character is expected (") (Unicode number U+0022) and should not be replaced with any other type of quotes, such as («) („) etc.

Glossary

The following is a brief overview of the specialized terms used in Survey Solutions. The meaning of these terms may be different from what you may have experienced in other systems. Follow the links inside for more detailed explanations in the support site articles.

2FA

(aka Two-factor authentication)

Security-enhancing feature requiring authentication of users with two different procedures. In Survey Solutions the two factors are:

• password, selected by the user, and
• time-sensitive token (number) generated using an authenticator app (typically installed on the user’s smartphone).

Assignment

A request/order to conduct one or more interviews as part of a certain survey to a specific user of the Survey Solutions system. Typically contains answers to one or more identifying fields that specify where the data must be collected. (typically 1 document per unit of survey).

Support checklists

When reporting a technical problem in Survey Solutions, you may be requested by our team member to collect the information based on one of the following lists.

Slow Tablets

Use the instructions below to diagnose tablets’ performance issues, which can manifest themselves as:

• slowness (occasional or permanent) while working with the Interviewer App;
• freezes for a considerable period of time;
• crashes and restarts of the application;

or a combination of the above.

NB: For troubleshooting the synchronization errors, refer to the synchronization problems article.

1. Check that the tablet is not in the low-power mode. If in the low-power mode, change to normal mode and retry (some tablets may need to restart, or sleep and wake up for the mode switch to become effective).

   February 8, 2021

Scalability of Survey Solutions

Overview

The Survey Solutions supports horizontal scaling and may be deployed as a web-farm for servicing a large number of client connections.

This is especially important for operations like population censuses and large national surveys.

A web-farm installation is implemented on multiple systems (called nodes) working in concert to service the received requests. Increasing the number of nodes in the farm allows to improve the overall performance: the responsiveness of the system and number of users working simultaneously.

Deleting a survey

Survey deletion is possible, but as a dangerous operation is made available only to server administrators. When a survey is deleted all data collected as part of that survey is irretrievably and irreversibly lost. Hence the same steps should be applied as described in actions after the end of the survey.

Make sure you backup your data before deleting a survey! Even if this was training, pre-test, or a field test. In some cases even data collected as part of such exercises can be invaluable for improving the questionnaire, estimating the performance of interviewers, or duration of the survey.

FAQ for email support

1. Before writing your request, study the documentation online, read the FAQ, and browse our users’ forum. Don’t neglect Google or other search engines. This is usually the fastest way to get your issue resolved. It will also help you to use the right terminology when asking a question.

2. All of the questions of the kind “Is it possible to do X in Survey Solutions?” or “How do I do X in Survey Solutions?” should not be sent to the support team directly, but rather be posted to the user forum as public questions.

   April 21, 2020