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Developer GuidesUsing Custom Question Types with SurveyTester
Special Plugins for your surveys are used for leveraging the out-of-the box possibilities of your survey solution. Some survey programs offer native support for Drag and Drop or Ranking Questions, while others are limited to basic questions like categorical, open ends or grids. Most systems allow to embed your own css and javascript files, so it is possible to create your very own question types. Shopping shelfs or image maps are just some examples.
SurveyTester support for custom question types
Custom Question Types usually use native questions, like a grid question for capturing responses. These native questions are usually hidden and respondents interact with some kind of visual overlay. Shopping shells, heat maps or other interactive questions can be created this way.
SurveyTester usually interacts with the native questions in the background, so there are some rules, you should consider if custom question types are developed:
Use two-way update mechanism between the visual component and the background question
When SurveyTester automatically creates answers, it will usually use the background question. Make sure that the visual question will update the layout, whenever the background question is changed. This helps the tester to see, what answers were used and avoids a lot of confusion.
Set fields to readonly if they should not be changed
Ring Grids with text fields is a great way to pass information to the visual component and capture the answers. As an example, a text grid could use one row for a shopping product and could store information for building the shopping shelf, like product name, price and an image.
Other fields in the same row could be used to update the number of products, which were selected from the respondents.
When SurveyTester answers a question, it is important that it only answers the fields that are used for capturing answers. Any fields with control information (e.g. product name or price) should not be changed from SurveyTesters automatic answering engine.
When question plugins are developed, it is important that control fields (like product name) are marked as readonly. SurveyTester will not try to change these fields and this way, the question type will usually work.
price “Single Price”
style(
Control(
ReadOnly = true
)
)
double;
Add “empty-answer” information to fields.
When a survey needs specific answers for some fields, Surveytester needs to know about this. An example is that the number of selected items of a specific product (in a grid) need to be 0 if no item is selected and it would not be possible to use just an empty text. By default, SurveyTester would usually use just empty text if answers are deleted. This can cause problems, if the Survey System would expect a number (e.g. “0”)
When creating the survey, it is possible to add the attribute “accesskey” bio any field.It depends on the sed survey system, how this can be achieved. The attribute accesskey=”0″ would be used to use the number 0 when a field content is deleted.
amount “Amount”
style(
Control(
Accelerator = “0”
)
)
long;
Identify other needs and contact the SurveyTester Support Team
If the custom question plugin needs any other specific interactions, such as triggering a function, before proceeding to the next page, it might be necessary to implement some custom code into the SurveyTester auto answering methods. Please contact us to discuss your needs.