Overview

1. Can you describe to me in every day language what this will do?
2. Who will use it?
3. What is different about it from other tools like it?
4. Who are its competitors?
5. Why would someone choose it over any of the competitors?

 

  Can you describe to me in every day language what this will do?

General use

Once the Survey Project webapplication is installed it can be used by anyone who is properly authorized to
a. create and design surveys, questionnaires, web forms or data entry forms online. 
b. answer and submit the surveys as a registered user or a public respondent

SP is a webapplication you need to have running on the web with a hosting provider or on a company's internal intranet web server 

No need to do an installation on your own PC or Laptop. It's all done on the web (internet or intranet) and all you need is an internet connection and a browser to have world wide access 24/7.

Creating Surveys

First you start creating surveys with the formbuilder. It's an easy to use "editor" to add and edit questions and answers. There are many different question- and answertypes to choose from. The design of the questions can be completely customised with the WYSIWYG (html/text) editor.

The general layout and design of the survey can be adjusted through different  (CSS) editing options.

Campaigning

Besides creating surveys and (data entry or web) forms with the Form builder and a CSS editor to change the design of the survey you can start "online surveying campaigns".

The tool lets you create and send invitation mails to a list or lists of email addresses. People will receive the message including a link or secure code to a particular survey that can be accessed on the web. Before you send the survey there is a Preview option. The mailing status and any errors will be logged to check.

The results of the survey campaign can be tracked in different ways:
- see the list of invited people
- see the list of people who answered the survey
- basic statistics per survey are available (e.g nr of reponses per day, last entry etc.)


Security

Access to surveys by Respondents is possible in different ways depending on the type of security you choose. SP has [8] different access and security options, ranging from the use of passwords, tokens, ip-addresses, email invitation, entry number limitation etc. Security tokens and IP address ranges can be created and set at will.


Multilanguages

Surveys can be created in Multilanguage mode. This means the surveys questions and answers can be presented in different languages. Depending on the ML mode (user list selection, cookie, browser etc) on access the survey will be presented to the voter in any particular language chosen and created.

The SP tool itself is also fully "localised" and supporting multilanguage use. Main languages are: English (default), Dutch, German.  More languages are easily added (the basics for several languages are there already) to show all screens and texts in French, Turkish, Spanish or any other language needed.


Results & Reporting

There are several (graphical) reporting options inside the tool and you have access to the individual results (read and edit options) or respondents. Special SSRS reports are availalble. Survey results can be exported (csv or text file) so you can work on it in other analysis tools.

Also the other way around, previously exported results can be imported back in for further use. There's a file manager to handle files that were uploaded by survey takers through a webform or survey.

Once created questions and answers can be saved to so called Libraries where you can easily group them for reuse in any new survey.


Roles & User management

Part of the SP tool is a roles and usermanager through which you manage access to the survey tool in general, to individual surveys and / or the different features of the tool per user and/ or per role (= group of users with certain rights).

In general two types of user groups can be distinguished:

Survey administrators
- Create and administer surveys, webforms, data entry forms
- Create and administer survey Campaigns
- Create and administer Results /Reports

Survey Takers
- take surveys
- fill out forms
- data entry

By making use of roles and different rights custom made access to different features can be set.


Helpfiles

Throughout the tool basic help options are in place or additional help and information is available through the projects websites (e.g. Youtube, Comunity site, Codeplex developers site).


Who will use it?

Anyone wanting to collect/ gather or capture data or information through the web might be interested. Both companies small and large and private individuals. For both (scientific) research, non-profit and commercial use it's an ideal tool.

Simple and complex webforms that are easily integrated with existing websites can be used for submitting information concerning subscriptions, conventions, meetings etc.

Webforms and surveys can easily be transformed into data entry forms (including repetitious data entry options) that may be used in a call center environment or any service oriented business place.

Companies may use it both internally (e.g. Net Promotor Score, Service Quality surveys, Employees Satisfaction surveys and benchmarks) as well as in the outside world (clients, customers, business to business).

Areas of use:
- PR/ Communication
- Customer research
- Scientific research
- Registration and administration

  What is different about it from other tools like it?

There are many websites offering similar features (e.g. SurveyMonkey.com, Zoomerang.com etc.) except that their services are only free up to a certain limit or extent. After that you have to start paying. Also the free features are limited most of the time (nr of surveys/ users/ amount of data/ traffic etc.)

Also these sites are owned by commercial companies that do not share or sell any of their tooling or surveying software.

The SP tool and software is completely free, open source (all source code freely available), fully accessible and has no limitations on its use or features.

There are other open source survey tools (not many though). Best known is LimeSurvey but the Survey Project is the main option for people/ companies making use of the Windows platform and Microsoft .NET technology.

The history of the Survey Project tool goes back all the way to 2005 when the project initially started and was called Nsurvey. It became quite popular with a fast growing community who put in a lot of effort. Its founder went commercial when the tool had really matured. He's still active on the market. The new SP project took of in 2009 where the former community left it and started modernizing the software and bringing it up to date.  

Applying the latest technology, improving and expanding is one of the main goals of the project ever since.
 
Who are its competitors?

The main "contender" is LimeSurvey which has a long tradition and stable community supporting it. LimeSurvey (formerly know as PHPSurveyor) originates from a completely different technological background.

Featurewise LimeSurvey and Survey Project may not be that different. SP is fully supported on the Windows and Microsoft platform: Windows operating system, IIS webserver, Mssqlserver database, C#.NET programming language.

The original PHPSurveyor tool was rooted in the open source LAMP tradition: Linux operating system, Appache webserver, MySql database, PHP programming language.

Technology wise LimeSurvey and SP are alternatives rather then competitors. Otherwise there are no serious open source .NET contenders to SP.

Because of the technology used there is a solid backup of a large world wide group of C# .NET programmers combined with a global multinational like Microsoft taking care of constant development and improvement of the techniques and tooling used and promoting open source at the same time.

Tools for maintenance and development used on the SP are all free and freely available.

  Why would someone choose it over any of the competitors?
 

• It's free and it's open source.
• No limitations, restrictions or unexpected costs involved.
• It's architecture and setup is secure and flexible: easy to expand and customize, add new question types etc.
• It's making use of the latest (open source) .NET web technologies and development tools
• Feature rich: all basic necessities to start you own surveys, campaigns and reporting
• Easy to use yet many option for different survey and questioning/ answering scenarios
• A large user-base (> 60,000 downloads) and growing community to support the tool and the project.