Beginners Guide to LimeSurvey Part 1: How to get the most out of your account

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Details: Category: Blog; 20 July 2020

3 years ago

In this blog post we’ll have a look at the settings of your LimeSurvey Cloud account. Watch out for our pro tips. Directly after you registered for your (free) LimeSurvey account you can access all your account settings. Here is an overview of the most important settings that help you to optimize your installation and work flows. In LimeSurvey we distinguish between your personal LimeSurvey Cloud account and the actual survey application. This separation helps you to divide everything related to your contract from everything related to your surveys. This is especially helpful when you are not working alone but in a team. Survey Application In the section Survey Application you do not only find the URL to your personal LimeSurvey installation, you can also change the name of the web address that links to your survey here (e.g., survey.limequery.org). Domain names can be changed once a day. However, please do not change them while a survey is online, otherwise the participation links will no longer work. Under survey application you can also reset the password of your main LimeSurvey app user. Pro Tip 1: If you run out of responses ahead of schedule, there is a possibility for early renewal. Just go to Packages and order the response package you need. However, please bear in mind that the additional responses will not be transferred to a new LimeSurvey package. So do not buy additional responses too early. Pro Tip 2: If you want to use your own domain name instead of limequery.com/org/net, you can use domain aliasing and link to your own internet address (subdomain). Thus, the persons invited to your survey know directly from the link that you are the sender. Domain aliasing is available from the LimeSurvey Cloud Expert Package onwards. Community Profile In the profile menu you can also edit your Community Profile. You also find your Community Profile in the profile menu. In this section, you can set up the information displayed when you login to the forum. The forum is a virtual room where users can exchange information or simply talk about LimeSurvey. You can also change your password for the LimeSurvey Cloud under Community Profile. However, please make sure that you do not confuse this password with the admin password for the survey app. The latter can only be changed under Survey Application. Talking about security: We highly recommend that you activate a two factor authentication (2FA) in your community profile settings. Support If you are stuck with LimeSurvey and can’t find the solution to your problem in the forums or in the Frequently Asked Questions section please feel free to contact our Support. Our personal support is for LimeSurvey Cloud users only. Describe your problem as detailed as possible and also add screenshots and information about your operating system or your browser to the support ticket. Our experienced support staff will provide help as soon as reasonably possible. GDPR Agreement Another time saving feature is the possibility to generate a GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) agreement for compatible data processing with LimeSurvey GmbH. Our contract wizard leads you through the necessary steps and gets you on the safe side. Billing In the Billing section you can update your invoice address, request quotes and view your orders and invoices. Further reading For additional information please refer to our online manual Interested in Part 2? That was the first part in our "Beginners Guide" Series. Check out the other parts for more insight. Part 2 Part 3

In this blog post we’ll have a look at the settings of your LimeSurvey Cloud account. Watch out for our pro tips. Directly after you registered for your (free) LimeSurvey account you can access all your account settings. Here is an overview of the most important settings that help you to optimize your installation and work flows.

In LimeSurvey we distinguish between your personal LimeSurvey Cloud account and the actual survey application. This separation helps you to divide everything related to your contract from everything related to your surveys. This is especially helpful when you are not working alone but in a team.

Survey Application

In the section Survey Application you do not only find the URL to your personal LimeSurvey installation, you can also change the name of the web address that links to your survey here (e.g., survey.limequery.org). Domain names can be changed once a day. However, please do not change them while a survey is online, otherwise the participation links will no longer work. Under survey application you can also reset the password of your main LimeSurvey app user.

Pro Tip 1: If you run out of responses ahead of schedule, there is a possibility for early renewal. Just go to Packages and order the response package you need. However, please bear in mind that the additional responses will not be transferred to a new LimeSurvey package. So do not buy additional responses too early.

Pro Tip 2: If you want to use your own domain name instead of limequery.com/org/net, you can use domain aliasing and link to your own internet address (subdomain). Thus, the persons invited to your survey know directly from the link that you are the sender. Domain aliasing is available from the LimeSurvey Cloud Expert Package onwards.

Community Profile

In the profile menu you can also edit your Community Profile. You also find your Community Profile in the profile menu. In this section, you can set up the information displayed when you login to the forum. The forum is a virtual room where users can exchange information or simply talk about LimeSurvey. You can also change your password for the LimeSurvey Cloud under Community Profile. However, please make sure that you do not confuse this password with the admin password for the survey app. The latter can only be changed under Survey Application. Talking about security: We highly recommend that you activate a two factor authentication (2FA) in your community profile settings.

Support

If you are stuck with LimeSurvey and can’t find the solution to your problem in the forums or in the Frequently Asked Questions section please feel free to contact our Support. Our personal support is for LimeSurvey Cloud users only. Describe your problem as detailed as possible and also add screenshots and information about your operating system or your browser to the support ticket. Our experienced support staff will provide help as soon as reasonably possible.

GDPR Agreement

Another time saving feature is the possibility to generate a GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) agreement for compatible data processing with LimeSurvey GmbH. Our contract wizard leads you through the necessary steps and gets you on the safe side.

Billing

In the Billing section you can update your invoice address, request quotes and view your orders and invoices.

Interested in Part 2?

That was the first part in our "Beginners Guide" Series. Check out the other parts for more insight.

Part 2

Part 3

To download the RC2 of LimeSurvey 4, click here. You can also access the live RC2 release of LimeSurvey 4 here. The new question editor panel A new question editor has been implemented (based on CKEditor 5 and VueJS 2). A script editor has also been added to help users increase the complexity of their surveys by entering JavaScript, HTML or CSS code. In terms of question attributes, you will see only the general ones next to the question and help text boxes. All the other question attributes have been moved below the text boxes, being located next to the subquestion and answer option menus. Together with the live preview feature, users can now see how the edits impact the question design live. Global & group survey settings In LimeSurvey 4 you can edit the survey settings at the global and group level. The participant and publication & access settings, presentation information, and notifications can be easily set up from the global and survey group menu: The inheritance level works in the following way: Global settings -> Survey group settings -> Survey settings Any change done in one of the upper levels will immediately be inherited by the survey as long as the inheritance attribute is activated. New file management system The panel for resource management has been replaced with a file management system that provides a complete overview of the files and folders from your instance. The ability to copy and move files from one place to another has also been implemented. Data encryption Data encryption is a new feature provided in LimeSurvey 4. It has been created to help survey administrators better cope with the new data-protection regulations adopted in different parts of the world (e.g., GDPR or HIPAA). This new capability permits the encryption of personal data located in the central participant database and/or survey participants table. Moreover, you can also encrypt the data you collect from your respondents if the encryption question attribute is enabled. User management panel and user roles The user management panel has been completely redone offering you the possibility to add dummy users, as well as importing/exporting users from other LimeSurvey instances. However, the biggest news is the appearance of roles – now you can simply create roles within your organisations (e.g., students, professors, research), and easily provide user groups the same role, which in turn assigns to each user group the same set of global permissions. What is missing? At the moment, the “question themes” feature is being integrated into the GUI. It will be much easier to add customized questions into your instance - you will be no longer limited to the default question types. In the meantime, we are also working at the development of our LimeStore - a market for plugins, themes, and question themes created by our community members. For more information, access the LimeStore page. Testing and testing! We are getting closer to the release of the first stable version of LimeSurvey 4. To fasten the process, join us in testing RC2 and report the potential issues on our bugs tracker. If you have questions about LimeSurvey 4 or you just simply want to show the gratitude to the community and developers who contributed to this release, join our forum discussion topic here.

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4 years ago

LimeSurvey Authorized Partners - Get Your Lime Job Done

Did you know that you can hire a professional for survey creation or customization? Or for support? Or to generate autom ...

LimeSurvey GmbH is a growing organization that governs the development of the LimeSurvey software. Two types of packages are provided on our platform: LimeSurvey Cloud and LimeSurvey ComfortUpdate. The former provides users a hosted software solution supported by us, while the latter comes with ComfortUpdate, premium plugins, survey templates, and themes. To better understand the difference between LimeSurvey Cloud and LimeSurvey ComfortUpdate, check out our blog post on different hosting solutions for LimeSurvey. However, the growth of our user base increases the number of special requests we receive that cannot always be fulfilled by us. Therefore, we have actively started to expand the services we provide via the creation of a group of service companies that provide a wide range of optional commercial services. These services may include individual support, consulting or training, installation and maintenance of LimeSurvey on your own server, integration of LimeSurvey in your software environment, custom code development, survey creation, and the design of individual themes. Who Are Our Partners? The partners network consist of individual and organizations located all over the globe: Africa, Australia, Asia, Europe, North and South America. Services & Support The services and support provided by our partners cover the following areas: Hosting: If case self-hosting is not for you, and LimeSurvey Cloud does not meet your demands, our partners can accommodate any time your individual LimeSurvey installation. Support: It covers many areas of LimeSurvey such as consulting services, and plugins. To better understand what each partner provides, visit their personal website. Training: While our manual and forum activity is high, sometimes you just need to find out about tricks and workarounds from professionals. That gives you the possibility to outperform your competition when it comes to survey implementation and analysis. Installation: Sometimes, you just wish to self-host your instance on the hosting of your organization. However, due to the existing server configuration of your organization, the installation process of LimeSurvey may need some additional tweaks. Moreover, you may also have to configure it properly in case you work with confidential data. Therefore, the possibility of hiring a professional for configuring web servers should definitely be taken into account. Integration: Automatizing workflows or the integration of LimeSurvey in the platforms used by your organization is a must-have for increased efficiency. After all, the usage of API and scripts may not be for everyone. Customization: LimeSurvey is a flexible software, feature acknowledged by everyone. With direct access to LimeSurvey developers, our partners are always informed about the development of the software, as well as about the features that will be implemented in the upcoming releases. Survey creation: Time is a scarce commodity. Not everyone has time to go through the manual and forum, and learn how to construct a survey. As a result, outsourcing this task may allow you to concentrate on more urgent things. Theme design: An eye-catching survey heavily increases the rate of completeness for your survey. Our professionals are always ready to meticulously work on the survey theme to provide you the best design possible or to create a layout in line with your corporate identity. Finding the Right Partner Now that you have an overview of the different services that can be contracted, you can start looking for the right partner for your organization. To do that, check first the list of partners list of partners from limesurvey.com, and explore the links on the left menu to find your matching partner for the service and country you are looking for. If a partner lives in the same country as you, (s)he will be displayed as featured partner on the same web page, being displayed at the top. As in any other Open Source project, the community continues to represent the most important part of LimeSurvey. However, with the growth of the project and its user base, many requests need to be fulfilled in a timely manner. Therefore, users seeking quick professional help can contact anytime LimeSurvey professionals who are eager to satisfy their project requirements anytime. We will introduce our partners on our blog in the upcoming weeks. In the meantime, you may start contacting them directly or you can write us via the limesurvey.org platform support tracker.

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4 years ago

Workshop report 5/2019 - What's up with LimeSurvey 4

We are constantly improving LimeSurvey, that is why we are working on a new edition that will come up with a new redesig ...

The new question editor Starting with LimeSurvey Developer Edition 4.0.0beta1, a new question editor will be provided. It has been completely redesigned, as it was split up and not very easy to use. The new system provides a live-preview mode to help users easily edit questions, as well as subquestions and answer option in the same window. The new design is based on VueJS2 and CKEditor 5. We have also added a script field to the question editing, where you can add scripts that should be run with the question. It is automatically wrapped in the necessary on:ready functions. New text- and source editor The popup editor has been removed. We have added in exchange a pure source mode based on the ACE-editor, the same one used in our theme editor. Now it is easier to work with the source code of your questions, subquestions, question groups, and any other text edition fields in LimeSurvey. The source mode can be set to the default mode in the personal options. Global survey options With LimeSurvey 4 you are able to change your global survey options. The global options will be inherited by any survey in the system. Moreover, you can see the inherited value in the overviews. This goes the same way as the design theme options introduced in LimeSurvey 3: Global survey settings -> Survey group settings -> Survey settings Other notable changes The most important changes are hidden from sight. The database has been restructured, languages are now fully normalized, providing us the opportunity to build the foundations of a limitless survey software.The first steps to a fully modularized survey rendering are also done with this version. The question types now consist of a data renderer, a view renderer, and a twig package, making it easy to correct and fix question-related issues. We’ve added a few other extra options, like question-based encryption settings, as well as soft-mandatory question attributes. Future development We are currently removing papercuts in the newly created functionalities and recreating the functions that were available before the changes. We will also add in the upcoming weeks a way to upload and use custom question themes in LimeSurvey 4.Some parts are still not working perfectly and we are in heavy testing to find all possible edge cases. If you wish to help us, please download the beta release, test it, and report all the issues found on our bugs tracker. Join our forum discussion about the new release and stay tuned for more information about the development of LimeSurvey 4!