User:Mazi

Need help?

I do all kinds of forum support in my free time which is very time consuming. I don't get a penny for this so I'm always looking for companies/folks/aliens who need some kind of advanced support. As the leader of Limesurvey Support and a web developer I can help you with many issues.

Fields of work

• Installing Limesurvey: Having problems installing this great software? Don't know how to set up config files? I can help you with this. Just provide me with your login data (which is kept confidental) and I will do the rest for you.
• Create your Survey: If you don't want to spend hours getting familiar with the admin screen or if you are having problems setting up your survey/questions I can help you. I can check your survey design or set up your survey including groups, conditions, question attributes, workarounds or whatever else you need doing with con.
• Implement Additional Features: Are you missing a certain feature? Do you want to connect another tool/database with Limesurvey? I have coded some functions of limesurvey so hopefully I can help you with this or at least establish contact with other developers.
• Branding/Templating: Often people want to adapt the limesurvey look and feel according to their brand or website. I can offer you some alternative templates or edit existing templates.
• All-inclusive-package: If you need a working Limesurvey installation which is accessible at a certain URL and you don't want to cope with setting up the system or getting used to the Limesurvey interface to set up your survey I can do all the work for you. This may include some or all of the following tasks:
  • register the domain name of your choice
  • set up the latest Limesurvey version to be accessible at the new domain
  • design a custom template which matches your corporate design
  • create your survey in Limesurvey and make it available to the public
• Analyse requirements: Are you looking for a free and powerful survey tool but you don't know if Limesurvey will fit your needs? Just send me your requirements and you will receive a detailed analysis stating which of your requirements are already covered by Limesurvey and which problems can be solved by workarounds or additional coding.
• Premium Support: Don't want to wait hours until someone helps you in the forum? Have a deadline which keeps you awake at night? Some problems you couldn't solve for hours? I'm mostly available 24/7 to help you with your problems. Under certain circumstances I can offer 12/24h email response time or telephone support. Just get in contact with me.

Coding

Passing and saving an external ID

Problem: A customer was looking for a solution to pass a panel ID to a survey and to save the passed ID without showing the question/ID to the user.

Solution: I set up the survey to save the ID and hide the question from the user. Furthermore some internal configuration settings had to be changed to save the passed data. It would also have been possible to pass the panel ID back to the panel provider.

Email assessment message and score to the user

Problem: Up until now there has been no integrated function to email the assessment message and score to a users email adressd.

Solution: With some additional coding the customer was able to send the whole assessment message he had previously entered together with the assessment score to the users email address which the user has entered in a predefined question of the survey.

Mark the user's answers within public statistics

Problem: Usually Limesurvey's public statistics (which are shown to the user after he has submitted the survey) only contains the aggregated data of all users who have answered the survey so far. The customer was looking for a solution to mark the current user's answers within these statistics and for a certain question type. Furthermore the answer range and mean value needed to be calculated for public statistics.

Solution: A simple table layout was introduced using different colors to mark the answer range and arithmetic mean. Within this design the current user's answer was marked so he could see how his answers differed from the general public.

Customize admin notification email

Problem: The customer was looking for specially customized admin notification emails. The overview send by email should be restructured and contain additional data.

Solution: The function for sending admin notification emails was customized according to the user's requirements. Some additional coding and database querying resulted in a solution perfectly fitting the customer's needs.

Templates

During the last months I have created lots of individual templates for different customers. If you don't want to stick to the simple shipped templates but are looking for an individual design I'm your man.

Take a look at the screenshots of some of the templates I designed. If you click on the image you can see a higher resolution version. You can also see some of them in action by clicking the "Live Demo" link below the screenshots.

Example 1: (Live Demo)

img/wiki_up/bcaa_welcome.png	img/wiki_up/bcaa_survey.png
Example 2:
		img/wiki_up/bullying_welcome.png	img/wiki_up/bullying_survey.png

Example 3:

img/wiki_up/phonefusion_start.png	img/wiki_up/phonefusion_survey.png
Example 4: (Live Demo)
		img/wiki_up/tebbutt_start.png	img/wiki_up/tebbutt_survey.png

Example 5:

img/wiki_up/na_start.png	img/wiki_up/na_survey.png
Example 6: (Live Demo)
		img/wiki_up/csi_welcome.png	img/wiki_up/csi_survey.png

Example 7:

img/wiki_up/zapffrisch_survey1.png	img/wiki_up/zapffrisch_survey2.png
!Payment
I only need water and some bread but my wife likes shoes so I have to kindly ask you for some money for helping you (:wink:)
Depending on your requirements billing can be based on an hourly rate or we can negotiate all-inclusive-pricing. Due to bad experiences in the past I have to insist on payment in advance (not the whole sum but a prepayment to be sure I'm not to work for nothing).
Payment can be done by bank transfer or paypal (depending on where you come from).
!Contact
You can get in contact with me
*by email: marcel.minke(at)limesurvey.org
*by ICQ: #64469753
*by Limesurvey IRC -> look out for nick "Mazi"
*by phone/skype (send an email and I will forward my phone/skype number to you)
*by ordinary letter. There should be a letter box somewhere in front of my house. Just write an email to ask for my postal adress :)
!About me
!!Education
Born in 1980 I grew up in northern Germany. Having passed the high school diploma and completed basic military service I started studying Information Management & Information Technology in 2001. I received my Bachelor of Science degree in 2005 and Master of Science degree in 2006. A revised edition of my Master Thesis is available at Amazon. It deals with data mining in e-learning.
Having successfully finished university I started working on my doctorate at the Institute of Mathematics and Applied Computer Science. I'm working on data mining at wikipedia and tracking user behavior. You can get more information at my (German) wikipedia user page.
!!Work
From 2007 to 2008 I worked at Higher Information System (HIS), a company which develops software for universities. Within the next software generation HISinOne the company plans to use Limesurvey as a tool for lecture evaluation and it was my task to model the software architecture. I modelled plans how to integrate Limesurvey into HIS products and how to transfer data between the applications (a webservice will be used for this).
Since I left HIS, I have been writing up my dissertation and working free-lance as a Limesurvey consultant.