Confirmit 11 New Feature List

Feature

Details

Rolling Time Series period

When crossing with a Time Series object (the system variables interview_start or interview_end) in aggreagted tables, the "from" and "to" limits can be set relative to the current date. For continuous surveys, this enables you to report on a rolling time period, for example, the last three months, instead of a fixed time period (between two specific dates).

Rolling Time Series filter

You can set fixed filters based on rolling time series, for example, last month, as filters to use on your report, report folders, pages and/or tables.

Date Range Lists

Date Range Lists enables you to define a list of custom date periods that viewers can select from in the filter page. The designer can define a list of different date filters, both as fixed and rolling time intervals (for example last month, last 3 months, Q1 2006, etc.). Date Range Lists are defined in the "Date Range List" folder in the Report Toolbox. They can be set on filters in the filter page that is based on time series (interview start/interview end).

Flat Layout on Time Series labels

In aggregated tables, you can set "Flat Layout" on time series. Instead of nested headers (e.g. year above month) it will return the header on one line (e.g. "month, year" as in "February, 2007"). "Date Format" settings are introduced to control the format of this string. Several standard formats are available in addition to the ability to specify a custom date format.

This provides labels that are better suited in charts than labels from the nested headers.

Set Week 1

The report property "Week # 1" has been introduced, to set the week that should be counted as the first week of the year when reporting on week number. There are different standards for this in different countries, just like for the options for the first day of the week. Options are:

• Week with January 1st (default)
• First week with 4 days
• First full week

This property is only available for reports using BitStream files.

Response Rate Reporting in Reportal

It is possible to report on survey status crossed by background variables, also including respondents that have status "not answered" (i.e. respondents that haven't entered the survey at all) in Reportal. This enables reporting on response rates, for example, when you would like to look at response rates for different departments of an employee survey, etc. for aggregated tables based on background variables and system variables (Interview Start, Interview End, Interview Status, E-mails Sent (noOfEmailsSent) and Mailing Status (from the e-mail delivery report)).

This functionality is available for reports using BitStream files.

Reportal Viewer Texts in more languages

Resource texts (instructions, error messages, etc. for Reportal viewers) are available in several new languages: Arabic, Hebrew, Japanese, Korean, Russian, Chinese Simplified, and Chinese Traditional in addition to English, Norwegian, Swedish, German, French, Spanish, Finnish, Danish, Italian, Dutch, and Portuguese.

This change was implemented on Confirmit On-Demand, and for customers on Confirmit On-Premise it was included in patch 6 for Confirmit 10.5.

1000 Separator in aggregated tables

The property "Use 1000 separator" is available for aggregated tables (default: not selected). This gives the ability to have 1000 separators in numbers in the table. The separator used will correspond to the language settings on the browser of the designer/viewer, for example, for US English it will be a comma (,).

Remove menus and navigators from printed Reportal view mode pages.

Menus and navigators will be removed from Reportal view mode pages when printing to make them appear the same as pages exported in PDF. These controls will not be included in the print: Admin Menu, Benchmark selector, Button, Date picker, Navigator (menus), Parameter navigators, Presentation control and Page links. There is a style called reportal_hide_print which is included on view mode pages. All components that should be hidden are placed within a <SPAN class="reportal_hide_print">. This class can also be used for custom html on the pages.

"Filter by Mask" available for multi questions.

"Filter by Mask" is available on multi questions to allow removing, for example, "Don't know"/"None of these"/"Not applicable" answer options from the base. With this set, percentages will be calculated from the total number of respondents having responded to one or more of the answer alternatives that are included in the mask, instead of all respondents answering the question.

"Mask" and "Filter by Mask" settings on Parameters

Masking settings are available on Parameters, to give the ability to remove the same answer alternative from all single and multi questions and elements of grid in the parameter. Typically this would be used for a precode like "NA" or "99" for "Not applicable", which can then be excluded from all questions in the parameter. Combining this mask with the "Filter by Mask" setting, will also remove these responses from the base percentages are calculated from for these questions.

Ability to cross elements from different projects

With independent projects in the data source (projects outside joins or unions), it was not previously possible to include variables from different projects into the same aggregated table if they intersect with variables not in the same project (through being crossed (row/column), or through filters).

The "Override other projects" setting makes this possible for variables that exist in both projects. With this setting it will use variables from the same project for the variable(s) it intersects with.

Example:
interview_start from project A crossed with
q1 from project A and
q2 from project B

With "Override other project" set on q2, interview_start from project B will be used in the intersection between q2 and interview_start.

Use table title as chart title

Title settings on charts are extended so the table title can be automatically used as chart title (inside the chart image) instead of being placed above the chart image.

BitStream files setting on report templates

It is now possible to set "Use BitStream files" on report templates so that reports that are created based on such templates will default to using BitStream files.

Filter Summary

A filter summary page is introduced in the report designer to provide an overview of all fixed filters applied to elements of the report, and where they are applied (on report, folders, report pages or aggregated tables).

Deleted Reports

When deleting report definitions in Reportal, they are just soft deleted, and not immediately removed from the servers. The "deleted reports" list allows recovering deleted reports.

Position Based Series Settings

When working with series settings in Reportal charts, you can apply settings on "Default Series", "By Category" and "By Position".

• "Default Series" settings are global settings that apply to all series in the chart.
• These global settings may be overridden with settings "By Category". This gives the ability to set specific settings for all series of a specific category represented in the table, for example, for all averages.
• The "Default Series" settings and settings "By Category" may be overridden with settings "By Position". This gives the ability to set specific settings for up to five particular series, according to their order in the set of series. You may, for example, set a specific setting only for the first series.

This functionality is available on Confirmit On-Demand, and was included in patch 1 for version 10.5 for Confirmit On-Premise users.

Multi questions in verbatim tables

It is possible to use numeric multi questions in verbatim tables in Reportal.

This functionality is available on Confirmit On-Demand, and was included in patch 2 for version 10.5 for Confirmit on Premise users.

Feature

Details

E-mail Delivery Report is included free of charge to all on Demand users.

The "E-mail Delivery Report" add-on will be included free of charge to all Confirmit On-Demand customers.

Fixed Sender Domain is included free of charge to all on Demand users.

The "Fixed Sender Domain" add-on will be included free of charge to all Confirmit On-Demand customers.

When overriding the fixed sender domain (spoofing), the e-mails will be sent from different e-mail servers than when using Fixed Sender Domain

To avoid the IP addresses of the e-mail servers sending e-mails with "Fixed Sender Domain" becoming blacklisted because of "spoofing" (e-mails sent from domain names not matching the sending mail server), e-mails where the Fixed Sender Domain is overridden will be sent from separate mail servers. This is also applicable to e-mails from customers that have acquired "Premium E-mailing" (including Dedicated IP), when the sender domain is overridden.

Respondent Editor: Warnings include number of respondents

The warnings a user receives when deleting or updating sets of respondents in the Respondent Editor includes the number of respondents affected.

E-mail Activity Log

Company Administrators and System Administrators have access to "E-mail Activity Log" report in the Home menu. This report shows the number of e-mails sent for the current company per month. The report can also be grouped by date, weekday, week, quarter, or all.

Default language for e-mails set to "None".

When setting the e-mail objects in a multi language survey, the default language is set to "None" automatically instead of a language. This prevents accidentally setting a default language, resulting in, for example, e-mails sent to respondents for which you planed to set up a language specific version at another time.

Details

WYSIWYG in Translator

Confirmit Translator has WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) designer for the texts, to avoid translators having to work with HTML code.

Ability to change translation status on questions in professional designer

The translation status on questions is available as a property on the questions in professional designer, enabling professional users to change the translation status (for example, this is useful when making modifications to questions after the first translation).

Details

External access to review and edit questionnaire texts

Confirmit Questionnaire Reviewer is an interface that allows Confirmit users to provide access to review and edit all the texts of a questionnaire without a userid:

• Question Title
• Question Text
• Instructions
• Answer lists/scales*

* Access to changing answer lists and scales is configurable, since reordering of elements in the answer list may have consequences for survey logic and may be not wanted. Changes logged in Project log Survey need to be launched to activate them. This is an Add-on feature.

Distribute e-mails with encrypted url to access Questionnaire Reviewer

Access to Confirmit Questionnaire Reviewer can be given ad-hoc in an interface where the project administrator provides one or more e-mail addresses that should have access to review and edit the questionnaire texts, and creates the e-mail invitation for the review. The e-mails distributed will include a personalized, encrypted url allowing the user access to Questionnaire Reviewer for the selected project.

Alerts and logging of questionnaire changes

When a reviewer has completed their changes to the questionnaire, an e-mail alert is sent to the project administrator. The project administrator publishes the changes by launching the survey. All changes made in Questionnaire Reviewer are logged with the e-mail address of the person that made the changes.

Details

Debug Confirmit surveys on your PC with Confrimit Debug Station

Confirmit Debug Station is a downloadable application provided as part of the Confirmit license. The Debug Station is aimed at users with programming skills who write advanced scripts as part of their surveys and who need to debug the script code. Confirmit Debug Station must be installed on the user's PC, and the user must also have a .NET debugging application installed. Confirmit Debug Station can be used to run Confirmit surveys locally on the user's PC, attached to a .NET debugger, to debug script code in the survey (script nodes, precode masks, question masks, conditions, validation code and piping). The interview files (with the questionnaire definition and scripts) are generated by clicking the button below, and are downloaded from the server to the Debug Station by running "Synchronize" in the Debug Station. The interview can then be tested locally. When changes are made in the questionnaire on the server, the survey can be updated by regenerating the interview files for debugging and performing a new synchronization. No data is synchronized to the server.

Details

Min-width and min-height

Minimum width and minimum height settings are available in HTML styles (in community portal/survey layouts/Reportal).

The style settings height and width changed behavior in IE7. In previous versions of IE, these settings were treated as a minimum height/width when used on divs, so if the content is larger than there is room for, the div will stretch. Width and height style settings should be according to the CSS definition have been interpreted as fixed heights and widths, so newer browsers (like Firefox and IE7) will hide content that is beyond the height/width limit. This means that surveys, portals and reports with layouts that use height and width in the style settings may change appearance in IE7 compared to older version of IE. Min-height and min-width can be used as minimum height and width settings (behaving as height and width did in previous versions of Internet Explorer). When min-height and min-width is used, IE6 users will get height and width settings instead, so the layout will be consistent across browsers.

Details

Support for Internet Explorer 7 in CAPI console

Internet Explorer 7 is supported in Confirmit CAPI interview console from version 11.

CAPI survey setting: Include back button

There is a survey setting on the CAPI/Kiosk Options tab to control if the back button is to be displayed in the CAPI/Kiosk interview (previously CAPI/Kiosk interviews always included the back button).

Avoid users unintentionally selecting test mode of survey

The previous placement of the Test Survey button posed a risk for interviewers clicking that rather than the Actual Survey button, potentially going through the survey without their results being recorded. To prevent this, two changes have been implemented:

• The Test Survey button is located in the Tools menu.
• When entering a survey in test mode, a warning is displayed.

Custom code support

Custom Code assemblies are supported in Confirmit CAPI.

Details

Current Console Version displayed in the Console Management page.

The Console Management page displays what is configured as Current Console Version in Confirmit System Configuration (i.e. what it is comparing with). This makes it more obvious when some or all consoles have yellow light bulbs, and it will be easier for someone to discover that the system administrator has forgotten to update system configuration with the latest version.

Survey version displayed in project overview

Survey version is a number that increases each time you launch a survey. The survey version of each synchronized survey is displayed in the CAPI console and displayed on the Project Overview page for CAPI surveys. Previously, it was not possible to know which version of the survey was on the server.

CAPI Console Synchronization log

The log of the console synchronization will show information like console name, interviewer name, synchronization start time, duration of the synchronization, status of the synchronization and more. This enables administrators to monitor synchronization activity from the interview consoles.

Administrator login to console

Administrator login to console is provided to give administrators ability to login to a console and view information and perform synchronizations. Administrators can see the detail per survey and the interviewer’s synchronization status on the console. They can pre-synchronize/synchronize surveys for one or multiple interviewers and view other details of synchronization of survey per interviewer such as: # Complete, # Postponed, # Complete Synchronized, etc and also quota information.

Reallocation of interviewers

Supervisors can now re-assign respondents (with Interview Status New or Incomplete) from one interviewer to another. After the reallocation, respondent data from the server will be synchronized to the console for the new interviewer, so they can resume interviews for those respondents.

Automatic dial-up for console

This option allows the Console Administrator to enable dial-up mode for console and set dial-up information. This setting will be applied to all interviewers using the console, and interviewers don’t need to set it up or change it.

Import and export of console data

In case of synchronization being impossible (due to hardware malfunctioning, etc), all data from the console can be exported from one console and imported to another console. The import function will replace all the data on the other console with the data from the file.

Details

Web Services API to CAPI interview management

The web services API to CAPI administration enables integrating CAPI with internal field management systems. The API have functions for inserting and updating interviewers, assigning interviewers to projects, and for sending messages to interviewers.

Methods included:

• AssignInterviewerToProjects
• AssignInterviewersToProject
• DeleteInterviewer
• GetAllInterviewerUserIds
• GetAssignedInterviewerUserIds
• InsertInterviewer
• SendIndividualMessages
• SendMessageToAllInterviewers
• SendMessageToInterviewers
• UpdateInterviewer
• GetSynchronizationScheduleLog

Details

Database Designer Web Services API

The Database Designer Web Services API provides methods to get, update (update existing and add new), and delete content from tables set up in Database Designer. This provides the ability to integrate hierarchy definitions and lookup tables with other internal systems.

This API contains the following methods:

• DeleteAllContent
• DeleteContent
• GetContent
• SynchronizeContent
• UpdateContent

Details

Function SendMailMultipart to trigger e-mails in both HTML and plain text from surveys.

The current scripting SendMail function allows you to send your e-mails as HTML or plain text, but has not allowed sending as both (multipart message). A SendMailMultipart function has been introduced.

Syntax of the function:
SendMailMultipart(from, to, subject, bodyText, bodyHtml, cc, bcc, codepage)

• string from: sender's address (same as SendMail)
• string to: recipient's address (same as SendMail)
• string subject: subject (same as SendMail)
• string bodyText: plain text version of body text
• string bodyHtml: HTML-version of body text
• string cc: carbon copy address (same as SendMail)
• string bcc: blind carbon copy address (same as SendMail)
• int codepage: codepage (same as SendMail)

Respondent Report PDF export*

A script function in surveys allows generation and e-mailing of a PDF file with HTML, for example, showing the respondent's answers. The HTML has to be built as a string in a script node).

The syntax of the function is
SendPdfMail(html,from,to,body)

• html is a string with the HTML code for the PDF file
• from is a string with the sender e-mail address
• to is a string with the receiver e-mail address
• body is an optional parameter, a string defining the body text of the e-mail

The script will initiate a task that will run on the batch servers generating and sending the PDF file.

This is an add-on made available to all customers on the Confirmit On-Demand environment. The PDF export has the same unit charge for customers using Confirmit On-Demand as Reportal exports. Contact your Confirmit representative if you would like to disable this functionality.

Details

Restrict system administrator login to specific IP range

Configuration setting "ValidIPRangeForSysAdm" requires that a system administrator user will only be allowed to log into Confirmit if his/her IP address is within the specified IP range, preventing system administrator access from other IPs. This will further heighten the security on system administration.

Support for MS SQL Server 2005

Confirmit will from version 11 support MS SQL Server 2005 (in addition to MS SQL Server 2000). For Confirmit 10.5 support for both SQL 2005 and SQL 2000 was introduced in patch 5.

For Community Panel, the panel system introduced in Confirmit 11, MS SQL Server 2005 is required.

Archiving uses last_touched to determine "date of last complete"

A number of surveys are designed to redirect out of the interview at the end of the survey. At that point, interview_end is not set. The current archiving process looks for the most recent interview_end of a completed interview as the "date of last complete". It does not detect "new" completes in these surveys and will attempt to archive them regardless of activity.

The archiving task has been changed to use last_touched instead of interview_end.

File Library: "Switch current company" for users with SYSTEM_ADMINISTRATE or SYSTEM_PROJECT_ ADMINISTRATE

Users with SYSTEM_ADMINISTRATE or SYSTEM_PROJECT_ADMINISTRATE permissions have the ability to right click the root node in the File Library and switch current company. They are then able to see and upload images to folders from other companies.

CAPI Supervisor: "Switch current company" for users with SYSTEM_ADMINISTRATE or SYSTEM_PROJECT_ ADMINISTRATE

Users with SYSTEM_ADMINISTRATE or SYSTEM_PROJECT_ADMINISTRATE permissions have the ability to switch to a different company and supervise projects and interviewers belonging to that company (assign, remove assignment, Console management, view synchronization status, view synchronization log).

Project specific custom code assemblies

A project or company can have a set of project and/or company specific custom code assemblies. An assembly can be private to one project/company or shared for multiple projects/companies.

Company setting: Set "Don not perform data cleaning on Conditions" as default

On conditions, some companies would like to have "Do not perform data cleaning" checked by default. To accomplish this, a company setting has been introduced: Set "Do not perform data cleaning on Conditions" as default.

Config setting for footer text in Reportal

Config setting "ReportalCopyrightText" overrides the text at the bottom of all Reportal pages.