Hey everyone, As you may know, the new version of LimeSurvey is here! We made several changes to the user interface to improve the user experience. So we have been working on making the first steps in terms of stabilizing and improving the user interface. More enhancements are on the way, we will keep you posted. The following is the new UI design changelog for the latest version of LimeSurvey. We will update you on even more changes to the user interface and other new features in future articles. Below you will find the major user interface improvements to help you get started quickly and easily. Enjoy! “Create survey” shortcut in main navigation You just want to get going and cut to the chase? Great, just choose the first item from the main navigation and you’re ready to go. One click and you are exactly where you want to be, the survey section. Modals (Pop-Ups) All pop-ups in the application now have the same style and are built according to a certain structure to make the whole workflow more user-friendly. Page headers To get a better understanding of where you are in the application we have introduced green banners at the top of every screen of the application. Top bar The most important action buttons have been moved to the top bar and the amount of action buttons has been reduced to the essentials. Action buttons All action buttons are now styled in the same way and one specific action will always have the same icon associated with it for consistency. The most important actions are consistently positioned in the same location, to the left of the top bar. Furthermore, the most important action buttons have been moved to the left-hand side of all tables and we brought consistency in terms of icons, hovers, margins and the order of buttons. Additionally, small text balloons will appear when hovering over them, explaining the functionality of the concerning button. Tables All tables now have a new grid view class and are consistently styled and structured. You will find all buttons to help you see more information or make edits on the far left-hand side of the table. This helps you better manage your surveys, data and survey participants. Icons and small elements Three different icons for a single functionality like “Save”? No thanks! One icon is associated with exactly one functionality to make the design more accessible. The consistency makes for a better user experience. We also synchronized other small elements like dropdown-menu icons, page buttons of tables, main navigation elements and notifications. Pagination Under every table of the application you can now find consistent pagination to the far right-hand side. You can determine how many items you want your table to show you and, by doing so, customize your survey management. We hope you enjoy the new version! Now it is even easier to turn your questions into answers. We will update this changelog with more content whenever there are new elements to the user interface.More blog posts with specifics about these improvements and other changes to the user interface will follow in the upcoming period, so stay tuned. Have a nice day, everybody!
User Interface Design Changelog
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LimeSurvey authorized partners from Argentina, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, and the Netherlands introduced the services they offer (for example: support, installation, survey creation, customization, theme design, and training) and some of their very complex or very big survey projects done in the past.There was a hands-on demonstration of the new features of the upcoming LimeSurvey version 4, that you can already check out on https://devdemo.limesurvey.org. You can also try it out by downloading the development version from https://www.limesurvey.org/development-release. LimeSurvey 4 will be a huge step forward and will include many improvements both in the administration backend (where you will find among other features an integrated question preview and updated text editor), as well as performance improvement under the hood. Question themes, modules, and user roles are just a few of the highlights. Regarding the future development of LimeSurvey, founder and CTO Carsten Schmitz and the new CEO, Sebastian Wendrich stressed that LimeSurvey will forever remain free and open source.Details about the upcoming LimeStore were presented. LimeStore is the first place to visit when you are looking for extensions like plugins or themes. Even though LimeStore is still marked as beta, you can use it already to get access to plenty of free extensions, as well as extensions that can be unlocked by purchasing a Premium package (such as the 2-Factor-Authentication plugin developed by LimeSurvey GmbH). It will continue to grow and expand to cover the most diversified needs of the users.But besides all the fruitful discussions, interesting presentations, and insights into the further development of LimeSurvey, the LimeCon also was fun and helped to change the perspective on some issues. Did it help? Well, there is only one way to check that - follow us on one of the following social media channels to learn about the latest developments: Facebook Twitter Instagram Reddit Mastodon Xing LinkedIn
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Polling & Elections Polls and elections as easy as possible Polls and elections are a wonderful way of gathering collective opinions and driving decision-making processes forward. Individuals make thousands of decisions each day, often without even realising it. Extracting these decisions and furthermore, collective ones is a difficult task. However, this is where LimeSurvey can help out as it may be used for polls and elections. You can even check how the poll or election is going while it is still running. Exporting some of this data in the meantime creates a history. Additionally, inbuilt statistics tools may further enhance your productivity. Simple evaluation from within the system Get the most from your results by using intrasystem methods to efficiently process your data. Export statistics to CSV or PDF; alternatively, use the graphics of the inbuilt statistics tool within your own presentation. Full anonymity Due to the anonymity settings it is incomprehensible who gave the answers, even when working with the participant panel. This promotes honest and secure poll and election results which reflects in sensible decision-making. Creating polls or elections with LimeSurvey is possible with just a few clicks. Try it out now and create a free online poll. Create Survey Now
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Q: When and for what project did you use LimeSurvey the first time? A: When working at Deakin University in Melbourne, Australia in 2006, I started using LimeSurvey (which was then called PHPSurveyor) for experimenting with web based surveys. In 2005 at Deakin, with colleagues Ken Reed and Bridget O’Brien, we had developed a basic description of a questionnaire in XML, called “queXML”. At the time, we used manually edited XML in queXML form to describe the questionnaire once, then used XML Stylesheets to convert the XML in to specific code for particular survey packages. At the time we were using a system developed at UC Berkeley called CASES for telephone interviewing, and also developed an XML Stylesheet along with the Apache FOP processor to produce PDF documents of the survey. In early 2006 I discovered PHPSurveyor, which, while in its infancy was a very flexible tool for web based surveys. We developed a new stylesheet which produced SQL statements from queXML and manually inserted the questionnaire structure in the format that PHPSurveyor understood, and then in 2006, developed export code for queXML for PHPSurveyor, so it could be used as an authoring tool for questionnaires and export queXML. Carsten, who I believe had only recently taken the reins at the newly renamed LimeSurvey project, accepted our patch and queXML has been included in LimeSurvey since the very early version of LimeSurvey 1.6.Q: When did you start your business?A: In 2009 I moved from Deakin University to ACSPRI, the Australian Consortium for Social and Political Research Incorporated, and along with colleague and director at the time of ACSPRI, Ken Reed, set up ACSPRI as a small, academically focused survey research operation, independent of one particular university. ACSPRI has a long history in the social and political sciences in Australia, being established in 1976 to aid researchers to access survey data stored in the data archives of the ICPSR (Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research) in Michigan, USA. Since 2009, ACSPRI has provided survey services mainly to Australian universities and government research bodies, with a focus on using open source technologies such as LimeSurvey.Q: Tell us about your company and your team.A: ACSPRI is a small, not-for-profit organisation based in Melbourne, Australia. Our members are institutions, not individuals. Most Australian universities are members of ACSPRI, along with many government based research organisations. Our services are geared towards our members. We are a small team, focused on providing timely and friendly service.Q: Which services do you offer as LimeSurvey authorized partner?A: With many years of experience with LimeSurvey under our belt, including developing tools that wrap around LimeSurvey (such as our telephone interviewing system, queXS; our paper form mark recognition and processing system, queXF; and our tool for describing questionnaires and producing paper forms, queXML) – we consider ourselves a “full service” LimeSurvey partner, in that we provide the “usual” LimeSurvey services such as installation, hosting, survey programming, customisation, and theme development, but also provide support and development of tools related to broader survey data collection, not limited to just LimeSurvey. We believe LimeSurvey is a fantastic tool that forms an integral part of survey data collection operations more broadly.Q: Do you have a special tip for advanced LimeSurvey users?A: Use the “survey logic file” often, especially before activating a survey. Some logic issues may not appear as errors in the logic file, but may become clear to you if you notice the expression manager syntax not being highlighted.Q: Tell us about your most interesting or challenging LimeSurvey project.A: One project which I believe has shown the power of LimeSurvey as a data collection tool, but also stressed its capacity to the limit is a project we are running for collecting data for a Discrete Choice Experiment (DCE). DCE’s (also known as choice modelling) techniques, involve constructing a set of items (called a “choice set”) and then asking respondents a selected subset of these items. For this to work, the questionnaire in LimeSurvey needs to be set up in a way that has all possible choice sets pre-loaded, and also know how to choose the particular subset to display to the respondent. For this we have made extensive use of array style questions, along with the fantastically powerful Expression Manager system.Q: What do you consider the most important IT development at the moment?A: Containers. Software such as Docker has changed the way services can be delivered to greatly increase server utilisation and reduce administration – which both lead cost savings and efficiency improvements. We have been maintaining a Docker container for LimeSurvey which allows for the quick installation or testing of LimeSurvey without the need to provision and configure server. This container now has over 100,000 pulls on Docker Hub.If you would like to find out more about Adam & his team, please check their website. You can also address them questions on the forum.In case you would like to find out more about our network of partners, please visit the following website.
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Q: When and for what project did you use LimeSurvey the first time?We have started using LimeSurvey back in 2007 (version 1.53). The goal was to connect LimeSurvey to a student management tool used by universities. LimeSurvey allowed students to rate the different courses they attended.Q: When did you start your business?A: May 2009 - we just celebrated our 10th anniversary!Q: Tell us about your company and your team.A: From what I can tell, we are the most experienced LimeSurvey partner with > 1.000 LimeSurvey projects dealt with. We are a very modern company and we can't even state "there are X employees at our office" because our team is spread all over the world. There is a designer in Austria, our software developers are from Germany, Argentina, India, and France, we have survey design experts in India, our JavaScript expert is located in Canada ... so we are a very international team of experts who connect globally for different LimeSurvey projects.Q: Are you or your colleagues active in the LimeSurvey community (forum or Discord chat)?A: Yes, for more than 10 years we are helping users on IRC or in the LimeSurvey forums. Watch out for user name "Mazi".Q: Which services do you offer as LimeSurvey authorized partner?A: Short answer: All services listed on www.limesurvey.com. In addition to that, we are running an online shop on https://survey-consulting.com/shop from where you can download professional LimeSurvey themes. We will soon publish plugins to enhance the power of LimeSurvey.We are also offering an Android app called "OfflineSurveys" for running LimeSurvey surveys offline. Check out www.offlinesurveys.com for more details.Q: Do you offer themes, questionnaires, or plugins in the LimeStore?Yes. We are currently offering some basic themes and plugins for free. Of course, we are developing many more at the moment.Q: Are there any plans for new plugins or services you are going to offer?Definitely! We are planning to release about 10 LimeSurvey plugins this year, as well as 5-6 professional LimeSurvey themes which will come with different theme options that can be easily adjusted according to the needs of the researcher.Q: Which is the most frequent customer request you receive?A: "Help, I accidentally de-activated my survey. Are my responses lost?"… and to answer that question right away: No, they are not!Since that is a support request received quite often, we have written some instructions on "How to restore data from a deactivated LimeSurvey survey" on our website. Q: Do you have a special tip for advanced LimeSurvey users?A: Yes. Even though it is a complex tool, you should read about the "LimeSurvey Expression Manager". It is a very powerful feature we are using a lot, especially for custom reports and doing calculations at survey runtime You can even store the calculated values as answers.Q: Tell us about your most interesting or challenging LimeSurvey project.A: That's a tough question since we have dealt with so many projects. WHO (World Health Organization) always challenges us with huge and complex surveys and there have been various projects which involved complex reporting dashboards. But overall, the most challenging project is the LimeSurvey adaptation we have developed together with "myradiotest" (http://myradiotest.com). They are using LimeSurvey to ask users to rate different songs. Based on that feedback, radio stations all over the world are adjusting their playlists. There are over 100 different radio stations using the tool. More than 1.000 surveys are being conducted every year. The adjusted LimeSurvey software includes a media player being automatically integrated into certain questions. We also created a mobile optimized LimeSurvey theme for this customer, working currently on extending the reporting dashboard offered to their customers. Once a year we are visiting the customer in Vienna to train the staff and discuss new features and future development.Q: What do you like most about LimeSurvey – besides being free, open source, and professional?A: We love the new plugin system and would love to see many more plugin events (they can be provided by any LimeSurvey user!). Same applies to the LimeSurvey API. There are many more things you could do by extending it. From our experience, we can confirm that more and more users have started connecting LimeSurvey to other tools used by their company or organization.Q: Is there anything you would like to see implemented in future releases of LimeSurvey?A: While it is possible to apply conditions for subquestions, we would love to have the possibility to apply conditions to answer options. For example, "List radio" questions would definitely benefit a lot from that.Q: What are you truly passionate about?A: Using new technology to speed up things and to make life easier for everyone. That's why we help improving LimeSurvey every day.
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The questions focus on how they first learned about LimeSurvey, how they work with the software, as well as the services developed by them for users. Today we will discuss with Tammo ter Hark, our partner from the Dutch company Tools for Research (Kleine Stappen), who actively helps users on our forum, providing also professional LimeSurvey and consulting services to clients who wish to use the software professionally. Tammo ter Hark Q: When and for what project did you use LimeSurvey the first time?A: We encountered LimeSurvey for the first time in 2009 while doing a project for an insurance company. That was both a success and a failure: we saw the possibilities of LimeSurvey at first sight and we jumped right in. We made one mistake: we developed a sophisticated theme (by standards of 2009) specifically for one survey, but forgot to ask the customer what browser they were using. That turned out to be Internet Explorer 6, which was in 2009 already very outdated.We successfully finished the project (eventually) by placing LimeSurvey (and XAMPP) on a USB stick, which was used on dedicated PCs in the offices of the customer (on PCs with modern browsers installed). So, in the end we could collect the data, learning at the same time a lot during our first LimeSurvey-related project. Of course, many others have followed.Q: When did you start your business?A: We started in 2009, after I left TNO (Dutch Organisation for Applied Scientific Research) and teamed up with Jan Ehrhardt to start "Tools for Research". Happily working since then in making the life of research professionals easier.Q: Tell us about your company and your team.A: The two of us still own "Tools for Research". In the meantime, we have built a great team around us - made of a talented graphic/UX designer, several psychologists, and survey colleagues - who is already ready to help when times get rough. Next to working with LimeSurvey, we have specialized in working with Drupal and WordPress. We work with organisations located all over the world, having many customers from the Netherlands and USA.Q: Are you or your colleagues active in the LimeSurvey community (forum or Discord chat)?A: I attend periodically the IRC meetings and read the forum almost daily, Jan being the guy that you would see on GitHub.Q: Which services do you offer as LimeSurvey authorized partner?A: We want to focus on building surveys with beautiful and very responsive themes, as well as on reporting through R and Rmarkdown.Q: Do you offer themes, questionnaires, or plugins in the LimeStore?A: In 2016 we developed our own theme (TFR Responsive), then for the 2.06 version of LimeSurvey. That was sold through the great store of Marcel Minke. There was (and still is) a free version on our website.We started working on a similar theme for LimeSurvey 3.x, which is now in development and freely available on GitHub. We are waiting for the LimeStore to open to have our theme(s) available there.Q: Are there any plans for new plugins or services you are going to offer?A: We would really like to team up with other developers to make reporting easier. Currently, the tools are not adequate for the needs of the organisations we work for. We use the open source software R for that, looking at the moment for ways to make the whole process easier, since R has a steep learning curve. We would love to work on combined screens and document reporting via Shiny and RMarkdown.Q: What would you recommend to a person who uses LimeSurvey for the first time?A: Start with small steps, do not try eat this elephant in one meal. Find a coach and learn by doing. Remember that many users will possibly use mobile phones (depending on your use case) and that several question types will look differently on mobile phones and large screens. Make sure you test your survey on multiple devices (browsers, PCs, tablets, and so on).Q: Do you have a special tip for advanced LimeSurvey users?A: Not really, but we would like to meet them to discuss how they tackle certain challenges.Q: Tell us about your most interesting or challenging LimeSurvey project.A: We needed to make sure that a group of young people with certain mental disabilities would answer a periodical survey (every two weeks). We developed a way of inviting them via SMS and making sure they could fill in the survey in 2 minutes. And send them a nice "thank you" message (also by SMS) as soon as they had finished the survey. This proved to work well, response rate was higher than expected, and the respondents felt "heard".Q: What are you truly passionate about?A: Making things easier.If you would like to find out more about Tammo & his team, please check their website. You can also address them questions on the forum.In case you would like to find out more about our network of partners, visit the following website�.
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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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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.