Overview

Introduction

The Overview panel offers access to the main survey-related settings and functionalities. The panel can be divided in three parts:

• Overview toolbar
• Survey quick actions
• Survey summary

Overview toolbar

This toolbar contains the following options:

• Survey status: There are four types of buttons that you might see on the left part of the toolbar, depending on the status of your survey:
  •  : It is displayed if the survey is inactive. Click on this button for activating the survey. To see the URL of the survey, check the Survey URL box located in the Survey summary section;
  •  : It shows up if the survey is active. Click on this button if you wish to stop the survey (it cannot be accessed anymore by the respondents);
  • : If the survey is active, you can click on the Execute survey button to check and fill out the survey. The difference between this option and Preview survey is that the latter does not store your answers while the former does;
  •  : It is displayed if the survey has expired. To reactivate it, click on the button to access the publication and access control settings to change the start or expiry date/time of the survey.
• Preview survey: It allows you preview the survey. The green arrow appears when your survey is multilingual. Click on each language to separately check the multilingual versions of your survey.
• Tools: The following functionalities can be accessed from the tools menu:
  • Delete survey: Use this button if you want to delete the survey;
  • Quick-translation: Offers quick access to the translation menu. Please not that it is accessible only if your survey is multilingual - additional languages have been added besides the base language;
  • Reset conditions: All the survey conditions will be removed;
  • Survey logic file: It checks the logic of your survey. It is utilized when more advanced features are used within the survey. For more details, read our wiki section on survey logic;
  • Regenerate question codes: The users that have the permission to edit questions can allocate an unique ID to any survey question. However, if these IDs differ too much (the numbering is too messy), the Regenerate question codes function can be used to automatically rename the survey questions. The numbering can be:
    • Straight: If this options is used, each question will be allocated a code that corresponds to their order from the survey structure (e.g. Q00001, Q0002, etc.);
    • By question group: If this option is chosen, each question will be allocated a code that corresponds to the group each of them belong to and their order within that question group: (G1Q00001, G1Q00002, G2Q00001, etc.).
• Display/Export: For a comprehensive description of this functionality, check our wiki page on LimeSurvey export functionality;
• Survey participants: It is used when you would like to invite a group of people to be part of your survey and ensure that each person can only participate once. For further details, check the survey participants wiki page;
• Responses: It offers the survey administrator access to menus that allows him/her to see the stored responses, enter new data, export or import answers, and view the partially saved but not submitted answers. By clicking on the arrow, three options will show up:
  • Responses & Statistics: It displays a summary of all the stored survey responses and respondents;
  • Data entry screen: It allows the survey administrator to enter new data into his/her response tables. It is a useful function when you first record the answers from the survey participants offline and then you want to analyse their answers via the functionalities provided by LimeSurvey;
  • Partial (saved) responses: It displays the partially (but not submitted) saved responses.

Survey quick actions

Below, you will see in the screenshot five options:

• Format: It allows you to choose the way in which the questions will be displayed to the survey respondents. Three options are available:
  • Question by Question : The questions will be displayed one by one (one question per page). If this option is picked up, a separate "welcome" page and "end" page will be displayed when taking the survey;
  • Group by Group : Each survey page will display a question group. Also, a separate "welcome" page and "end" page will still be displayed when taking the survey, as in the "Question by Question" surveys;
  • All in one : If chosen, all the pages will be displayed on a single page. If you select this option, no separate pages exist for the "welcome" and "end" pages - they will all appear on the same page, together with the questions.
• Add group: It offers quick access to the Add question group panel - not available if the survey is activated;
• Add question: It offers quick access to the Add question panel - not available if the survey is activated;
• Edit text elements and general settings: If you click on it, LimeSurvey redirects you to the survey general settings page. For further details, please continue reading this manual section on LimeSurvey general settings;
• Response & Statistics: It allows you to "filter" your data and retrieve the desired information from your survey stored responses. For further details, please continue reading about the Statistics panel - not clickable if no responses are stored;
• Template selection: It allows you to select the template of your survey.

Survey summary

The bottom part of the Overview section offers some general information about your survey:

• Survey URLs: It displays the URLs used by the respondents to fill out the survey. If you have created a multilingual survey, each language has its own survey URL. In our case we have:
  • English (Base language);
  • Romanian: All the additional languages will be listed below the base language;
  • End URL: You have the possibility to redirect respondents to another page once they are done filling out the questionnaire. For more details, check our wiki section on Survey texts.
• Administrator: It shows the user that is the administrator of the survey;
• Fax to: It is used when you want to give a fax number on the "printable survey". For more details, check our wiki page on general settings;
• Number of questions/groups: It displays the total number of questions and question groups that exist within the respective survey. If you would like to add/edit/delete them, read about the survey structure of a LimeSurvey questionnaire;
• Survey Settings: A short description of the main settings employed by the respective survey;
• Survey texts: The options presented below can be edited from the survey texts panel:
  • Description: A general survey description;
  • Welcome: It displays the welcome message that is shown to the survey participants when they access the survey;
  • End message: It displays the end message that is shown to the survey participants when they access the survey.
• Start date/time: It shows the start date and time of your survey. Even if the survey participants have access to the URL, they will not be able to start completing it till the start date.
• Expiration date/time: It shows the expiration date and time of your survey. After the expiration date/time, no more responses are recorded.
• Template: It allows you to quickly edit the survey template. You can:
  • Open the template options ();
  • Open the template editor in a new window ().

For further details on the two options, check our wiki section on the usage of LimeSurvey's template editor.

All the options presented in the survey summary can be edited from the settings menu.