Headquarters

Import the Questionnaire

A questionnaire document prepared in the Designer site needs to be imported to the Survey Solutions data server before the data collection may start in that survey. This article outlines how to import a questionnaire from the Designer to the HQ.

  1. In the main menu select Survey setup, then Questionnaires.

  2. Click the Import questionnaire button.

    February 6, 2024

Server Audit Log

Survey Solutions server administrator may inspect the server audit log. The audit log lists important events that were initiated by the users on the server, identifying who made that action, and when.

For actions of interviewers, see the detailed actions log.

The server actually provides two kinds of audit logs: per workspace and server-wide.

  • To view the server audit log, the admin user should proceed to MenuAdministrationAudit log.
  • To view the audit log for a particular workspace, the admin user should proceed to MenuAdministration→ click on a workspace name in the list of workspaces → Audit log.

The audit log presents its records as a table with the following attributes:

August 20, 2023

Audio audit

Description

Audio auditing enables audio recording of the interviewing process for quality control. Audio auditing automatically records the full interview for selected assignments, stores the recording in encrypted audio files, and synchronizes these audio files along with the linked interview files. It is not possible to record only parts of an interview, but it is possible to select which assignments will be recorded.

How to enable/disable audio auditing

Before creating an assignment

  • In the main menu of the Headquarters navigate to Survey Setup > Questionnaires;
  • Click on a questionnaire;
  • In the context menu that appears, select Details;
  • Click in the box next to Record audio to enable audio auditing.

After this point, all created assignments will have audio audit enabled.

March 19, 2023

Exposed Variables

Exposed variables are special variables that are made available by Survey Solutions for speedy access that can be utilized for the filtering of observations in the interviews lists and map reports.

All questions and variables from the cover page of any questionnaire are automatically considered to be exposed and no action needs to be undertaken by the user to expose them. In addition the user may expose up to 15 questions or variables from the main level of the questionnaire (the interview level). These questions must be of the types that are acceptable for questions at the cover page.

May 11, 2021

Questionnaire Details Page

Questionnaire details page reflects information about the questionnaire that has been earlier imported to the Headquarters. You access it by clicking a questionnaire in the list of imported questionnaires (Survey Setup/Questionnaires)

Notably, the information properties reflect the structure of the questionnaire as designed (number of sections, rosters, questions, etc) and the information about how the questionnaire is configured at the Headquarters (whether the web mode is on, whether the audio recording is turned on for new assignments, etc).

November 19, 2019

Components of the Headquarters Software

The headquarters software is a suite of connected tools for the administrator and headquarters users:
 

  • to track the overall progress of the survey (Reports)
  • to review completed interviews (Interviews)
  • to manage the human resources (Teams and Roles)
  • to specify survey instruments, create survey assignments with those instruments(Survey Setup)
  • to export the data collected from these assignments (Data Export)
  • to find a check the status of particular case assignments (Troubleshooting)

The difference between the headquarters and administrator users is that the administrator can create headquarters/observer user accounts, archive user accounts, and delete questionnaire templates from the headquarters server.

June 29, 2016

Distributing Assignments to Interviewers

Step 1

Log in to your server using a supervisor account. If you are testing Survey Solutions, log in at demo.mysurvey.solutions using a supervisor account. 


 

Step 2

Once the supervisor’s dashboard has loaded, select the Assignments tab.

The list of assignments can be filtered by questionnaire template, person responsible, and/or archived status.

From the list of assignments, the supervisor the supervisor should select the assignments that they would like to assign to one of their enumerators.

June 28, 2016

Installer Command Line Parameters

Survey Solutions installer may be launched with command line parameters.

ParameterMeaningExampleDefault
Siteportport number on which the site shall be installed in IIS80809700
Connserverpart of the DB connection string identifying the address of the database serverdata.warehouse.com127.0.0.1
Connportpart of the DB connection string identifying the port of the database server4435432
Connusernameuser name for connection to the DBjohnsmithpostgres
Connpasswordpassword for connection to the DBMyPassword911
Installfolderfull installation path where the Survey Solutions server should be installedC:\World Bank\Survey SolutionsC:\Survey Solutions
Additionally, specify /s for a silent install.

Example:

Install to directory D:\SuSo\ silently and bind Survey Solutions site to port 8080 in IIS:

May 11, 2020

Alternative maps for servers in China

Survey Solutions map reports at the data server utilize maps provided by Google through their online service. The installation sets the parameters regulating access to this service with the parameters applicable to the majority of users, but these servers are known to be inaccessible from the networks in China.

To enable access to Google maps from China, a different server, specific to China, must be used. The following two parameters should be changed in the GoogleMap section in appsettings.Production.ini configuration file of the Survey Solutions server:

May 6, 2020

Changing the Interface Language

Survey Solutions interface for Headquarter and Supervisor users can be presented in different languages. This article describes how to switch the interface to be presented in an alternative language.

Recall that both HQ and Supervisor users work via a web browser. Switching the interface is done by telling the browser to request the content in a particular language. Note that this affects both Survey Solutions and other sites that are visited with the same browser.

June 16, 2016

Report: Survey Statistics

Survey Statistics report is accessible to supervisors and headquarter users, observers, and administrators.

The report presents basic statistics calculated on survey data currently on the server and eliminates (in some cases) the need to export the data for calculation of these statistics.

The report is always built within a single survey and is built for one of the questions in that survey.

The report may be presented in one of the two modes: tabulation or summary statistics. Summary statistics mode is always applied for the numeric questions, tabulation mode is always applied for categorical (single-select or multi-select questions).

January 15, 2020

Detailed action log

The detailed action log allows the headquarters users view important actions undertaken by the interviewers on the tablets, such as application start and login activities, starting or discarding an interview, synchronization attempts, and other actions undertaken in the last 7 days. The actions log is updated with any synchronization of the tablet. (But if the tablet does not synchronize, there is no way for the HQ personnel to know what actions were undertaken, since this information won’t be sent).

June 8, 2018

Downloadable Report on Interviewers

This report is accessible in CSV, TSV, or Excel formats from the list of the interviewers screen and contains important information about the equipment being used by the interviewer and various statistics about the interviewer accounts, equipment status, etc.

Thematically the indicators reported here are placed in the following groups:

Indicator namingGroup
i_*indicators related to the interviewer account
these indicators represent static or accumulated information about the interviewer account
t_*indicators related to the tablet device;
these characteristics, like RAM size or manufacturer are not expected to change throughout the lifetime of the device.
s_*indicators related to the current status;
these characteristics, like battery charge, or screen orientation may change throughout the lifetime of the device.
z_*indicators related to the last synchronization session;
these indicators characterize the last synchronization session.
d_*indicators related to dashboard of the interviewer
these indicators characterize the state of the interviewer's dashboard.

Below is the full list of the indicators exported in this report and their interpretation

December 6, 2017

Reports Tab: Track the Overall Progress of the Survey

Reports provide headquarters with a summary of the status of fieldwork—of progress by questionnaire, by team, by status duration, by devices/interviewersby geography, by quantityby speed, or on detailed survey statistics

All the reports under this tab can be exported in XLSX, TAB, and CSV formats. To export, navigate to the bottom right of the report, and click on the desired download format.

By questionnaire template

The Surveys and Statuses report summarizes the progress of each survey that headquarters is overseeing (i.e., data collection with a given template). The anatomy of the report is as follows. The column labeled “Survey Name” contains the name of each survey. The subsequent columns correspond to each possible status of a survey case in the Survey Solutions survey workflow. (For a detailed explanation of the workflow and the statuses, see the Survey Workflow article.) Each cell in the report captures the number of cases that are in a given state for a given survey (e.g., number of “Complete” assignments for “Household Roster”).

June 29, 2016

Menu Map

This article describes the structure of the main menu and dialogs structure of the Survey Solutions Data Server.

The items in curly brackets { } are links and buttons present in the dialogs. The rest are items in the main or context menus.

Please note:

May 13, 2021

Digital Map Services

Survey Solutions displays maps in several different pages and the sources of the map data depend on the service that provides the corresponding capability:

PAGE
SERVICE
Headquarters
Map reportGoogle
Map dashboard (regardless whether accessed from the Interviews or Assignments)Google
Interviewer profileGoogle
Preview of bounds of uploaded mapsEsri
GPS location question in interview review and answers overviewLink Show on the map leading to Google maps
Geography question in interview review and answers overviewEsri
Coordinates of the vertices in geography type questionLinks leading to Google maps online
GPS location question in web-interviewsLink leading to Google maps online
Interviewer App
Map dashboardEsri for Android
GPS location question previewGoogle static maps (this can be disabled in the Interviewer settings)
GPS location linkmap intent (can be handled by various user-installed applications, Google maps is available on many consumer devices)
Geography questionEsri for Android


Useful links:

October 3, 2024

Online maps key

Usage of online maps is possible in Survey Solutions by consuming data sources of Esri.

By default the API key is blank (not specified) and the online maps are not selectable on mobile devices. Specifying a valid key facilitates using Esri’s services supplying tiles for base map layer when:

  • using the map dashboard, and/or
  • answering geography type questions

in Interviewer and Supervisor apps.

Usage of the ESRI API key may (and likely will) cost you money. It is important to familiarize yourself with the pricing, plans, charges and limits as applicable. These conditions may be changed, possibly even without prior notice. Pricing and billing conditions may depend on whether the user is a private user or an organization. All of the billing for this service occurs between you and the corresponding provider, the Survey Solutions developers are not charging you for this service.

June 5, 2024

Map files

In Survey Solutions all maps are first uploaded to the server, then distributed to the interviewers based on assignments of maps.

This functionality is accessible for the users in roles headquarters and administrator only.

The Map files page is the page where the maps are managed at the Survey Solutions server (Headquarters). It can be accessed by

The Maps dialog is using two icons to denote types of the uploaded maps:

June 5, 2024

Digital Map Formats

Survey Solutions offline maps may be prepared in any of the following formats:

FORMAT
EXTENSION
TYPE
EXTERNAL LINKS
ESRI tile package.
*.tpk

raster
USDA Tutorial on creation of TPK tile packages.
ESRI documentation Create Map Tile Package
ESRI mobile map package.
*.mmpk

raster
ESRI tutorial on creating MMPK mobile map packages.
GeoTIFF
*.tiff

raster
OGC GeoTIFF standard
Example file and description.
Pacific Community (SPC) tutorial How to generate offline maps for Survey Solutions in QGIS.
Shapefile
*.shp
*.shx
*.dbf

vector
QGIS tutorial on creation of shapefiles.
ESRI Shapefile Technical Description

Useful links:

January 9, 2024

Shapefile maps

Survey Solutions Interviewer App displays maps for two purposes:

  • The dashboard depicts the assignments and interviews on the map by placing markers that correspond to the coordinates of an identifying question.
  • Geography questions (single- and multiple points, polyline and polygon) allow capturing geographical information by marking it on the map layer, typically a satellite or aero-photography.

Survey Solutions has been employing this functionality for several years already using the ESRI ArcGIS Android SDK components. A common problem for the interviewers is understanding the boundaries of their area of responsibility when using the above mentioned capabilities, because satellite and aero photography typically lacks the labels that help identify streets, blocks or landmarks.

June 14, 2022

Deleting accounts

Deleting accounts

An account that is created in Survey Solutions can not be deleted. Ever. This is because the account is mentioned in the history of the events that were originated by that user (such as created or completed an interview).

Yet an account can be archived, which is the closest thing to deleting it.

This action is available to an administrator only, which can (1) select the interviewer account to be archived and (2) click the Archive button to perform the action:

July 28, 2020

Two factor authentication (2FA) for user accounts

Setting up two factor authentication

  1. login to the server using your login and password;

  2. navigate to your account settings (for interviewers: Interviewer profile –> Edit personal info);

  3. click the Two factor authentication tab;

  4. click the Setup authenticator button;

  1. You will be presented with the Configure authenticator app form showing a QR-code.
  1. Now take your Android, IOS or Windows phone or tablet and set up any of the following applications: Google Authenticator, Microsoft Authenticator, or another authenticator as designated by the survey coordinator.

    May 13, 2020

Survey Solutions Server Observer

Observer is an optional account, kind of an HQ user with a limited functionality, to passively monitor a survey. Observer accesses information through impersonation, looking through the eyes of a different user.

An observer can do:

  • Read individual interviews including any comments left;
  • See reports;
  • See lists of users and their profiles.

An observer can not do:

  • approve/reject interviews;
  • create/delete assignments.
  • any other change-state operations;
  • download data.

An observer account is created for a server, not for a survey! Hence an observer user may monitor the activity in all surveys that are running on the server.

October 6, 2017

Dynamic filters for interviews

Dynamic filters are used to filter responses in the interviews list and in the map report. The filters can be formulated based on the variables belonging to the cover page and/or exposed variables.

Rules

Rules utilize comparative operators, that are logical operators for comparing the value to a constant. Which operators are available depends on the type of the question/variable:

  • For categorical single-select: equals, not equals.
  • For numeric: =, <>, <, <=, >, >=.
  • For text: equals, not equals, contains, not contains, starts with, not starts with.
  • For date:
    • on - event occurred specifically on that date;
    • not on - event didn’t occur on the specified date;
    • before - event occurred before the specified date;
    • not later than - event occurred before or on the specified date;
    • after - event occurred after the specified date;
    • on or after - event occurred on or after the specified date.

For all types of questions one can apply unary logical operators answered and not answered.

May 11, 2021

Headquarters user: Browsing the Completed Interview

Step 1

Log in to your server using a headquarters account. If you are testing Survey Solutions, log in to the demo server

 

Step 2

Go to the Interviews tab

 

Step 3

From the filter on the left side of the screen, select Approved By Supervisor

 

Step 4

Click on the interview key for the survey case that you would like to browse.

July 19, 2016

Interview Tab: How to Find, Review, and Delete Survey Cases

The Interview tab is designed for taking action. Under the Interview tab, headquarters may search for survey cases, reallocate them to different teamsreview them for quality assurance, and delete them to fix problems.

The interview tab consists of the following tools:
 

  1. Database of survey cases. The rows are survey case entries. The columns capture details about survey cases, such as the respondent’s address, interview status, and an indicator that the interviewer has or has not received the survey case.
     
  2. Filters for querying the database. The database can be filtered to show only the survey cases of interest—for example, those with a particular status or those done by a particular supervisor.
     
  3. **Toolbar with a Delete, Approve, and Reject button. **Survey cases can be deleted, approved, or rejected individually or as a group by selecting the check box next to each case. The toolbar will appear if one or more cases have been selected. If you would like to select all the survey cases displayed on that page, click on the first check box at the top of the list.
     
  4. Interview Key. This is a system generated random number for each survey assignment. Completed survey cases can be reviewed in detail by clicking on the interview key for that case. This will open another interface that will be discussed below.
  5. Search bar to navigate through the survey cases quickly.

June 30, 2016

Survey Workflow

Workflow Demonstration

Check out the video below (starting from 0:30) to learn about the survey workflow in Survey Solutions.

 

Workflow Description

Headquarters, designated by the PC at the top of the figure, determines the subjects that need to be interviewed (households, firms, geographic area, etc.) and their assignments across team supervisors. Assignments can include one or more interview cases. Team supervisors, denoted by the laptops in the middle, first receive these assignments and then allocate them to the members of their team.

June 29, 2016

Rosters-Export File Anatomy

Recall that each exported file corresponds with a level of observation in the questionnaire. Rosters and their source question are exported as follows:

  • Source question: Export file at the questionnaire level (corresponds with the name of the questionnaire)
  • Roster: Export file at the roster level (corresponds with the roster name)

List Roster

In the export file at the questionnaire level, a list roster source question generates as many columns as the defined maximum number of list elements. Recorded values will be shown in each column.

November 9, 2016

Questionnaire Data - Export File Anatomy

Every questionnaire will contain at least one data file corresponding to the main level of data, and potentially one or more subordinate files corresponding to additional levels defined by the rosters.

Questionnaire level file: file name corresponds to the title of the questionnaire  

The questionnaire level export file consists of the following columns: Id, question variable names including roster trigger questions, and the system generated case Id.

1. Id. Survey Solutions generated identifier for each survey case.
2. Variables for main (questionnaire) level. These variables contain the answers for the questions in the main questionnaire level. All sections of the questionnaire at the same level are automatically combined.
3. Rosters trigger questions. Answers to any questions that trigger rosters are also exported at their respective level. In this illustration the Household Roster (variable hh_list) and Garden Roster (variable garden_list) text list questions at the questionnaire level.
4. ssSys_IRnd. A system generated specific random number between 0 and 1 for each survey case.  

September 23, 2016

Data Export Files

Overview

The exported data will be in a .zip file containing one or more files. The number of such files is a function of the structure of the questionnaire, meaning that exporting produces one file per level of observation in the questionnaire, or in other words in addition to one file at the questionnaire level, each roster in the questionnaire will generate another export file.  For example, one file for household-level variables, one file for household member-level variables, and one file for asset-level or consumption item-level variables. Additionally, the .zip file will contain interview comments and interview actions files.  
 

August 18, 2016

Upgrading assignments

Survey Solutions assignments play a critical role in the survey process because they regulate who is supposed to deliver the incoming data (interviews). Each assignment is referring to a particular questionnaire.

It is best to not modify the questionnaire during the survey. Some of the undesirable effects of this are:

  • the survey becomes split between several databases, each has to be downloaded separately from Survey Slutions and appended later using external tools;
  • the data may no longer be comparable (e.g. choice sets differ between questions);
  • the data quality may be heterogenious (differing between collected earlier and later periods);
  • interviewers may need retraining for the newer version of the questionnaire;
  • the process of upgrading the questionnaire needs to be followed by upgrading of assignments, which depends on which interviews have been already conducted and which have not.

Sometimes this is unavoidable, e.g. in case a gross mistake was made during the questionnaire development and further data collection based on unfixed version doesn’t make sense.

December 12, 2018

Protecting pre-loaded answers

Starting with v18.06 Survey Solutions allows protecting values of trigger questions that have been preloaded from being subsequently modified by the interviewer. The protection applies to reduction, but permits extension. This is commonly needed in the panel surveys, where, for example, the names in the list of household members that are preloaded should not be eliminated by the interviewer, but new household members may be added if needed.

The protection applies to questions that may perform the role of triggers: 

June 6, 2018

Errors in user-supplied files for preloading

Survey Solutions allows preloading assignments with data, including answers to questions inside rosters and nested rosters.

It is the user’s responsibility to supply valid input files for this process. The user-supplied files will be validated to match the questionnaire template that is being preloaded. Survey Solutions can detect a number of inconsistencies and common problems and will indicate them during preloading. 

Each detected error is having a code listed in the table below. Additional checks may be added in the future. 

March 9, 2018

Survey Setup Tab: Import, Copy, and Delete Questionnaire Templates, and Create Assignments

The survey setup tab lets you do several things:

Questionnaires

  1. Import template. Import questionnaires from the Designer site to the headquarters software.
  2. Create assignments: Headquarters provides two ways of creating assignments for a given questionnaire: one at a time, or in a many at a time (batch).
  3. Clone questionnaire template: Copy the questionnaire templates previously imported to the server. This feature is only available to the administrator.
  4. Delete questionnaire. This feature is only available to the administrator.

Assignments 

  1. Archive and reallocate assignments to members of the data collection team. 
  2. Monitor assignments. Displays a tabular view of all assignment and enables you to edit the quantity of interviews for any assignment. 

Maps

June 29, 2017

Creating Assignments One at Time

Step 1

Log in to your server using the headquarters username and password

Note that each institution using Survey Solutions will utilize their own server. Consequently, your username can differ from the one depicted above
 

 

Step 2

Select the Survey Setup tab, and click on Questionnaires.

Step 3

Create the new assignment for your questionnaire.
 
Click on the questionnaire template you want to create a new assignment for, and then click on New Assignments  from the pop-up menu. 

June 29, 2017

Numbering in subordinate rosters during preloading

It is important to make sure that during preloading of multiple files the subordinate records are correctly identified.

The numbering depends on the kind of trigger used for determining the size of the roster:

  1. fixed: the Id variable in the subordinate file should contain the code of the item specified in the Designer.
  2. multiple choice: the subordinate file should contain the codes of items as specified during setting up the multiple choice question in the Designer.
  3. numeric: the subordinate file should contain the items with sequential ids starting from zero (0);
  4. text list: the subordinate file should contain the items with sequential ids starting from one (1). Note that the text list question itself requires indexing of members starting with zero (0).

February 23, 2017

Uploading Many Assignments at a time

For many surveys, creating assignments one by one will be a tedious and time intensive task. To help speed up your work, Survey Solutions allows you to batch upload many assignments at once using a tab delimited. Follow the steps below to perform a batch upload of assignments:

Step 1

Create a tab-delimited file with the identifying information for your assignments
 
Before performing an interview, data collection teams must know the name (e.g., name and surname of the head of household) and/or location (e.g., region, county, district, neighborhood) of who they should be interviewing. To facilitate locating the respondents, this identifying information will appear on the dashboard of enumerator app for each interview for which they are responsible.

June 27, 2016

Bulk email service providers

Bulk email service providers solve the task of sending out a massive amount of emails. Survey Solutions may utilize such a service provider to deliver email invitations for CAWI surveys to the respondents. At the moment the following providers are supported:

  • Amazon SES;
  • Twilio SendGrid;
  • Other senders that support Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP).

You don’t have to use the above services to conduct a CAWI survey, but in that case (just as it was in versions prior to 19.04) it will be your responsibility to deliver the links for the interviews to individual respondents. The use of the bulk email service providers streamlines this process.

August 6, 2024

Configuring SMTP server as an email service provider

Servers providing Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) service can be used to send out messages from Survey Solutions. The technical description for the SMTP has passed several revisions and users may refer to e.g. RFC 8314 for details.

The settings specific to using SMTP are described below, while the other settings common to other service providers are described in the article Bulk email service providers.

Host - the address of the server (may also be referred to as the SMTP server, or outgoing mail server, etc. in your provider’s documentation).

July 29, 2024

Configuring Amazon SES as an email service provider

Amazon provides a number of services (free and paid) that may be of interest to the application developer. Here we are specifically interested in utilizing the Simple Email Service (SES) from within Survey Solutions for mass email sending.

Usage of this service may cost you money. Make sure you understand all charges, limits and policies before utilizing this service.

Amazon Simple Email Service is available at the following address: https://aws.amazon.com/ses

If you are already an Amazon AWS user, you can login to your Management Console right away. Otherwise you will need to create a new AWS account.

May 24, 2021

Webpage Templates

Survey Solutions presents several web pages to the respondents to the web surveys (CAWI). These pages may need to be customized at the web interview setup page: MenuSurvey SetupQuestionnairesYourQuestionnaireWeb interview setup.

Changes made to these templates take immediate effect: any new page of the corresponding type will be shown using the most recently saved template.

Web pageDescription
Welcome page

This page is shown to the respondent opening the link to a web interview.

The content of this page will usually contain description of the survey, its purposes and objectives, motivation for participation, and other descriptives/instructions.

The page consists of three user-editable elements:

  • title,
  • description, and
  • the text on the button to start a new interview.

Survey coordinator may apply formatting to the description part of this web page.

Resume Page

A resume page is shown to the respondents when they resume an interrupted interview (started, but not completed).

The page consists of three user-editable elements:

  • title,
  • description, and
  • the text on the button to resume the interview.

Survey coordinator may apply formatting to the description part of this web page.

The description may mention %QUESTIONNAIRE%, which will be automatically replaced with the name of the survey.

Complete

Provides a possibility to customize texts utilized at the system-generated Complete page of a web-interview.

The page consists of two user-editable elements:

  • Note for supervisor, and
  • Complete.

Survey coordinator may not apply formatting in any of the elements of this web page.

Finish page

Provides a possibility to customize texts utilized at the page displayed after a web-interview is completed.

The page consists of two user-editable elements:

  • title, and
  • description.

Survey coordinator may apply formatting to the description part of this web page.

Text formatting

Where formatting is supported it is entered using the following toolbar:

November 26, 2020

Email Templates

Survey Solutions can send email notifications to the respondents to the web surveys (CAWI). These notifications can be configured at the web interview setup page: MenuSurvey SetupQuestionnairesYourQuestionnaireWeb interview setup.

Survey Solutions server automatically determines, which notifications need to be sent out to the respondents. Every hour the notifications of the type marked with ^ in the table below are sent out, if a bulk email service provider has been set up.

November 26, 2020

Web Interviewing

In addition to CAPI surveys on Android tablets, Survey Solutions provides two distinct possibilities:

  • Interviewing: Interviewers conduct interviews using the web interface (without a tablet);
  • Self-enumeration: Respondents fill out interviews in the browser.

The difference is essential:

  • In the first case the person filling out the interview is a known member of the team, has an account created in the system, assigned to a team of a certain supervisor and so on. We use this mode when e.g. we set up a call centre and our interviewers don’t physically travel to the respondent, so don’t need a mobile device (tablet) or to work offline (disconnected), but collect multiple interviews and report to a certain supervisor;

    October 30, 2020

Configuring Sendgrid as an email service provider

SendGrid is a bulk email service provider that can be used in Survey Solutions for delivering invitations for CAWI surveys as an alternative to Amazon SES: https://sendgrid.com/

Usage of this service may cost you money. Make sure you understand all charges, limits and policies before utilizing this service.

SendGrid reqires you to have a domain and confirm yourself as a domain owner. The sending address must belong to this domain. For example, if you want to send emails from name@site.com you must confirm yourself as the owner of the site.com.

March 31, 2019

Customize web interview messages

Web interviews conducted with Survey Solutions contain reasonable default messages suitable for many surveys. But if the default messages are not suitable for a certain purpose, they can be customized in the web survey setup dialog at the Survey Solutions Headquarters:

Editing custom text messages for web interviews

For every parameter select if you wish to display a built-in default message, or a custom one, and if so, provide your custom (formatted) text of such a message. You can use the formatting toolbar provided in the editor to adjust the font color and font attributes, include numbered and bullet lists, and include hyperlinks.

April 2, 2018

API: R-package

Introduction to the Survey Solutions API R-package

Why this package

The World Bank’s Computer Assisted Survey System (CASS) Survey Solutions is a powerful tool for high quality data collection and used in many statistical offices around the world. Besides the standard GUI, it also comes with a powerful REST API. For details see https://docs.mysurvey.solutions/

To further facilitate its integration in a fully automated workflow we have developed this R package, which covers almost all of the available API calls. With this vignette you get a first overview on the different functions, further vignettes are available on survey management, paradata analysis and shiny integration.

May 10, 2023

Survey Solutions API

Survey Solutions includes a powerful and flexible API which allows automating some tasks and allows our users to build larger systems, which may compliment Survey Solutions to achieve larger goals. 

Some examples of use could be:

  • schedule periodic export of collected data
  • an external dashboard or monitoring and reporting system, which updates some indicators every night and publishes them to a website, or
  • an external checking and validation system which verifies collected data against some external sources of information and rejects automatically the incorrect interviews, or
  • an integrated system, which utilizes Survey Solutions for data collections tasks and a statistical package for continuous analysis,
  • facility management, inventory and price monitoring systems, etc, etc.

It is up to our users to decide on the particular scenario of use taking into account their needs and existing legacy systems already in place. The integration mode is usually dictated by the external system, which may determine, for example, in which language the system is implemented or to which storage the data is transferred from Survey Solutions.

May 1, 2022

API: .NET package

Introduction to the Survey Solutions .NET API Client package

There is a client library aviable to be used in .NET runtime to execute API methods of Survey Solutions software. In order to get started install dotnet SDK. After done that you will be able to use included in SDK CLI to create a new project, execute the following command:

dotnet new console

This will create a sample console application. To add Survey solutions client library execute following command:

March 5, 2021

API interactive description

The following page contains an interactive description of the Survey Solutions API for the current release: https://demo.mysurvey.solutions/apidocs

If your server’s version is different, check its API at: https://SERVERNAME.mysurvey.solutions/apidocs

January 23, 2021

API: Powershell Module

SSAW PowerShell module contains cmdlets wrapping Survey Solutions API to abstract away from some of the HTTP details. As PowerShell command-line shell is already present and all Windows machines, users can start automating their interaction with Survey Solutions application without any additional software development. PowerShell can be installed on Mac and Linux computers as well, but you may prefer to use the Python client insted.