Release 20.06 of Survey Solutions adds the following new features:
- Selection of language for export;
- Possibility to reject interview to a different user;
- Increased Limit for dimenstions of lookup tables;
- Introduced new Maps API;
- Temporary Web Interviews
Selection of language for export
Survey Solutions allows data collection in multiple languages if the designer of the questionnaire has included translations for questions, options, and other localizable questionnaire elements. Up to this version the export of data was possible only in the main language, which was not optimal for international teams collaborating on surveys. Now the export may be produced in any language included as a translation to the questionnaire. The corresponding language selector will appear at the export page if the selected questionnaire contains any translations in addition to the default language.
This feature was requested multiple times in our users’ forum here, here, as well as in numerous requests sent to the support email.
You will also find that you can now rename the original language from the fixed word ‘Original’ to any title that better describes the language.
Reject interview to a different user
In the previous versions if an interview needed to be rejected to a different user the supervisor had to do two actions: first reject the interview, then re-assign to another interviewer. In the new version this can be done as a single reject-to action.
This is not just a convenience feature. This has important data integrity consequences. In the older versions if the original interviewer managed to synchronize between the two actions, he was getting the rejected interview, and so did the new interviewer. This resulted in unwanted duplicates if the supervisors were not paying attention. In this new version the rejection and re-assignment is done as a single atomic action, so that the original interviewer doesn’t stand a chance to collect the interview back on rejection (clearly, the supervisor can still reject to the original interviewer if she wishes to do so).
Limit for lookup tables has been increased
Lookup tables had a limit of 5,000 rows which was shorter than the maximum number of items in the categorical questions (15,000). This resulted in the need to break down conditions to seek values in 2 or 3 lookup tables, possible, but inconvenient for writing conditions and maintaining the tables.
The new limit on the number of rows for the lookup tables (15,000) allows to accommodate the values necessary for validation of the categorical questions without the need to break them among multiple tables.
Maps API
A new API has been added to manipulate the maps assignments at the server. The following endpoints are added:
- Get information about the currently loaded maps;
- Get information about the currently made maps assignments;
- Assign maps to interviewers;
- Un-assign maps to interviewers;
- Delete maps.
These queries are implemented through the graphql API functionality. See the full graphql schema at: https://demo.mysurvey.solutions/graphql/schema or the corresponding page at your server.
Note also that all these queries must be executed as POST-type queries.
Temporary web interviews
As an efficiency mechanism, the new version of Survey Solutions will create web interviews as temporary interviews until the first answer to a question is given by the user. This will reduce the number of started interviews, which contain absolutely no user input. As soon as the user provides any input (such as answers a question, or writes a comment) the interview is getting placed into the list of the interviews. But if the user leaves the page without entering any information, the interview is disposed of.