Personal Demo Server

Survey Solutions users may familiarize themselves with the Headquarters/Admin functionality using a personal demo server (PDS).

Personal demo servers are managed through the self-service portal. You start by submitting a corresponding request. Before you proceed, make sure you understand the purpose and limitations of the PDS:

• Every Survey Solutions user may request one PDS.
• There are no forms to fill and the server becomes available shortly after the request is submitted.
• The address of the server is https://username-demo.mysurvey.solutions and cannot be changed.
• The server and all stored data will be automatically deleted 30 days after it was created.
• A PDS may not be extended, but can be requested again after it expires.
• We do not do backups of data stored on PDS and there is no possibility for any data recovery after the site has been stopped (all content is deleted immediately).
• Once a PDS is created for a user, it may not be transferred to another user.

The objective of a PDS is to give the user a playground to study and experiment and not to collect any real survey data. In fact the PDS are configured to handle only minimal workloads (approx 1,000 interviews).

Data Server Errors

The following errors may be encountered when working with a data server:

1. “Unable to import new questionnaire: Could not connect to Designer. Please check if Designer is available and try again."

Your Headquaters installation is trying to contact the Survey Solutions Designer server to import the questionnaire, but can’t reach it. It is very unlikely that the Designer is not responding or is not working read how to check here so the problem is most likely with your network configuration. Consult your network administrator and ask him/her to trace the signal and see where it stops. Most commonly it is prevented by your Firewall software or hardware.

DB connection errors

The following error may be encountered during the server startup, when it fails to establish connection to the database server:

Note, that since the message is displayed on a publicly accessible page, it does not elaborate the specific reason for the problem.

When the server displays the above message, it is incapacitated and the error needs to be fixed asap. This is especially critical if the server is being utilized for CAWI surveys, where the respondents following the link in the invitation will likely be lost if they encounter this message instead of the survey form to fill out. Also the interviewers will not be able to synchronize their tablets, neither to submit collected interviews, nor to receive new assignments. In fact, because the database is storing the information that is needed to authenticate the users, no activity can be undertaken on the server that requires authentication.

AWS setup

Installation of Survey Solutions on Amazon AWS

The installation consists of the following steps:

1. Create security group for web server and RDS to be able to communicate
2. Create PostgreSQL instance
3. Create EC2 instance for running Survey Solutions
4. Install Survey Solutions

Create security group

In order to have connection between Survey Solutions and PostgreSQL you can create new security group as described in here.

From the AWS Management Console:

• Click on EC2 under the Compute heading
• Scroll down the left-hand navigation to Network & Security
• Click on Security Groups
• Click on Create security group

In the create security group specify name and description:

Configuring export to external cloud storage.

Survey Solutions may be configured to export data to major international cloud storage providers:

• DropBox
• Google Drive
• Microsoft OneDrive

To enable export to the external storages the following configuration changes need to be done to the configuration file appsettings.Production.ini:

1. Add section:

[ExternalStorages:OAuth2]
RedirectUri="https://YOURSERVERNAME/data-export-storages.html"
ResponseType="code"

Note that you need to substitute-in your server name in the RedirectUri parameter.

2. Decide which external storages you want to make available to the users of your server (this is shared across all workspaces) from the above mentioned list of cloud providers.

   April 29, 2021

Support packages

Support packages are also known as tablet information packages. These terms are used interchangeably in this documentation.

Survey Solutions contains a built-in mechanism for collecting the data from tablets and transmitting it to the HQ server. This helps to investigate the issues where the interviewers can not supply any detailed problem report and commonly describe the problem with “it doesn’t work” or “it crashes” and it is difficult or not possible to access the device directly.

Device Logs

Survey Solutions contains a built-in mechanism for logging the problems and transmitting the log data from tablets to the HQ server. This helps to investigate the issues where the interviewers can not supply any detailed problem report and commonly describe the problem with “it doesn’t work” or “it crashes” and it is difficult or not possible to access the device directly.

The information contained in the device logs is rather technical and should be interpreted by IT personnel or software developers. If you are looking for a description of activities undertaken by an interviewer, rather than solving a technical problem, then the Interviewer Actions Log must be used instead.

Survey Solutions Server

This article describes the main steps to setup your own Survey Solutions server.

• Study the requirements for a server. These requirements are minimal and may be periodically revised. Your survey may require a different hardware configuration. You may need to calibrate for a few months before the survey to determine the optimal configuration.

• Follow the installation instructions to install the prerequisites and the Survey Solutions itself.

• Note: there is only one installation set regardless where you want to install: to a physical server or to a cloud-based server. The installation file for survey solutions may be obtained from the Download section of the self-service portal.

  November 20, 2020

Azure setup

Installation of Survey Solutions on Microsoft Azure

In order to install - register on azure portal and login. Installation steps are going to use azure shell.

After loggedin into azure shell execute command with variables that are going to be needed later. Feel free to change them as you need:

RG=surveysolutions \
LOC=westeurope \
STOREACC=surveysolutions \
SHARE_NAME=surveysolutions \
PGSERVER=suso-postgres \
PGPASS=password \
WEBAPPNAME=surveysolutions-webapp \
SRVPLAN=AppSvc-SurveySolutions-plan

• RG - resource group where all survey solutions related resources are going to be grouped
• LOC - location where you will run survey solutions software. Choose the one that fits your needs https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/global-infrastructure/geographies/
• STOREACC - storage account that will contain binary data https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/storage/common/storage-account-overview. Should be unique so change it, do not use one provided here
• SHARE_NAME - name of file share for survey solutions to store binary data
• PGSERVER - name for PostgreSQL server
• PGPASS - password for PostgreSQL database change. Make your own password, do not use the one provided in here.
• WEBAPPNAME - address and name of created survey solutions intallation. Should be unique across all other web apps.
• SRVPLAN - name for created service plan

Create a resource group:

Export Service

Version 20.08 and newer

Version 20.08 is delivered with export service embedded within Headquarters application. No separate windows service is installed in the system, only IIS website. All the information regarding startup of export you can find in logs folder. You still need to have BaseUrl configured properly, but no need to manage ExportServiceUrl configuration.

Version 20.07 and older

Survey solutions comes in two parts. Headquarters user facing web application (usually executed within IIS web server) and Export background windows service. Web site is communicating with its export service using HTTP protocol and specified in settings port. If you open your appsettings.Production.ini file you can find two URLs that are important for export service: