Clipboard is a flexible, web-based application for developing simple web-based questionnaires.
There are two main parts of the application: console.php which is the admin interface to the questionnaires and results; and survey.php which displays the questionnaire to a respondent and processes their responses.
To install the application:
Go to http://<yourwebsite>/clipboard/console.php and login using the details you defined in adminuser.php.
In the new questionnaire form, simply give the questionnaire a name, and enter question text for each question you would like to include.
For each question, you will need to specify its type, as follows:
Under 'Responses' for each question, you can specify the list of tickbox options (each on a new line) which appears, or the default text to be shown in a text box. For example, entering...
There are two ways to edit a questionnaire in Clipboard: graphically, by entering text into a form template; or by editing the raw questionnaire in XML format. The form-based approach is normally more user friendly, but with experience, you may find it is quicker to create a questionnaire directly in XML, which gives you lots of flexibility to re-order questions as you want.
When using the form-based approach, you can insert a new question after an existing one, and edit the question text and response list.
Clipboard auto-numbers your questionnaire starting at 1. So, if you have a questionnaire with five questions, and decide to insert a new question after question 3, Clipboard will automatically renumber question 4 to 5, and 5 to 6 for you, and show a new empty question in the right place.
n.b. Be careful when editing the 'raw' XML questionnaire definition file. The structure of tags is very important to the way Clipboard displays and processes questionnaires, and the application may not work properly if the tags do not match up exactly.
This is a handy shortcut to enable you to preview the questionnaire respondents will see on-screen from within the console. While you are logged in to the console, you will see a 'Go...' bar of links at the top of the screen. This is only shown while you are logged in, and will not be displayed to people completing your survey. It provides you with a convenient way back to the console while in preview mode.
Clipboard offers you two options for accessing the data collected through your questionnaires: a simple text box of results you can edit, or cut-and-paste from; or the option to email a tab-delimited plain text file of the results to a specified email account.
n.b. Be careful when editing the 'raw' results directly - response fields are separated by tab characters, and by editing the results, you may inadvertently alter the field structure, which could results in different rows not sharing the same layout of fields.
Deleting a questionnaire is fairly self-explanatory - select it from the menu, click 'Delete' and confirm. Beware that once deleted, the questionnaire cannot be recovered.
When completing a questionnaire, Clipboard offers respondents the opportunity to save their responses before completing the survey, in case they need more time or want to complete the questionnaire in more than one session. In these cases, it generates and stores a temporary file containing their answers, and provides them with a unique URL link to the survey which they can bookmark in their favourites. By returning to this link at a future date, they will find the question form pre-populated with their previously-given answers, and when they complete the questionnaire and submit it, the temporary file is deleted. However, if they do not return to the questionnaire, the temporary file will remain, so there is an option within the console to delete old temporary files for survey projects which are no longer active.
Clipboard uses customisable templates or header files to control the configuration and look and feel of surveys. These template files contain the CSS stylesheet rules, which determine the colours, fonts and sizes used in the survey layout. You can edit them directly to customise the look and feel of the application to your organisation. It also contains a number of configuration settings near the top of the file:
$bigboxwidth - the width of a large 'bigbox' questionnaire field, in characters
$bigboxheight - the height of a large 'bigbox' questionnaire field, in rows
$smallboxwidth - the width of a single-line 'smallbox' questionnaire field, in characters
$questionperpage - if FALSE questions are all shown on one screen. If TRUE each question is shown separately with 'Next' and 'Previous' buttons for navigation (requires Javascript to be enabled)
$postponeoption - if TRUE, respondents have the option to save a half-finished survey and return to it later via unique link. if FALSE, this option is not presented.
$progressindicator - if TRUE respondents are shown a percentage indicator of how much of the survey they have completed (if in 'one question per page' mode). If FALSE no indicator is displayed
$progressbar - whereas $progressindicator is a textual indicator, if TRUE, $progressbar shows a thermometer-style graphical representation of percentage complete. Again, only applies to multipage surveys.
$nextbuttonlabel - multipage surveys only: the wording on the button which takes respondents on to the next question. Can be localised, or just amended to your preferred text.
$previousbuttonlabel - multipage surveys only: the wording on the button which takes respondents back to the preceding question. Can be localised, or just amended to your preferred text.
$submitbuttonlabel - the wording on the button at the end of the survey which respondents use to submit their answers. Can be localised, or just amended to your preferred text.
$multicolumns - if TRUE, answer options for single (radio button) and multi (checkbox) questions are displayed in two columns to make for a more compact layout.
$organisationname - the name of your organisation which appears in the page title bar
$thankyoutext - the text at the end of the questionnaire before the submit button which thanks respondents for their time. Can be localised, or just amended to your preferred text.
$bigboxwidth - the width of a large 'bigbox' questionnaire field, in characters
New in Clipboard 1.4:
$confirmationmessage - the text which appears on final screen, once questionnaire has been submitted. The default is " "Many thanks - your responses have been received. You can now close this window."$surveystatus - if CLOSED, respondents are politely told the survey is no longer accepting responses. If OPEN, survey is displayed as normal.
Sometimes, it can be helpful to have a plain text version of the questionnaire available, for example in preparing a version to administered on paper, or to email to somebody without web access - or simply as a backup. You can select a questionnaire, enter your email address and have a simple text version sent to you as an attachment. If you want the options and checkboxes from the web version of the questionnaire translated into "[ ]" tickboxes and dotted lines, leave the 'Include tickboxes' option ticked.
.questionnumber {
display: none;
}
This will 'hide' the question number for each question. You can then manually add a question number in whatever format you like to the question text for each question.$questionperpage = "FALSE";. Replace FALSE with TRUE and save the header. Each question in the questionnaire will then appear on a separate screen, with 'Next' and 'Previous' buttons to allow the respondent to move backwards and forwards through the survey. To show a progress indicator ('x% complete'), set the $progressindicator setting to TRUE in the header.$multicolumns = "TRUE".<template> and <validation> tags to the questionnaire definition, but these are backwards compatible so you should be safe to copy across old surveys into Clipboard 1.3 and the data format will be updated transparently. Version 1.4 has made no changes to questionnaire format, though it does add a field to the start of each data row to record the user ID. If no user ID is supplied in the URL string to the survey, 'Anonymous' is entered instead. $surveystatus = "CLOSED". Future visitors will see a polite message telling them the survey is no longer accepting responses (you can edit this message in the thankyou.php file).<style>rules, look for the background: url("... rule within the clientlogo selector. Change the URL of the file to the URL of your logo, and amend the width and height accordingly.var sections to extend this if you're feeling brave.http://www.pentri.com/clipboard/survey.php?surveyid=1&uid=XYZ123 then the value 'XYZ123' would be automatically added to the start of the response data for that respondent; where no uid value is cited in the link, 'Anonymous' is added instead.Any comments or queries about this software should be addressed to Steph Gray
You are free to use this software, and refine or improve it for your own purposes under the terms of the GPL licence. You may not use any element of this software within commercial projects or charge for it, or obscure or remove Pentri's name or Steph Gray's contact details from the application.