Using QuickBase for Surveys

Surveys in QuickBase

 

Part of the charm of QuickBase is that the platform can be used for many different purposes – there are all kinds of use cases already at work on the platform, but also every day new ones are being thought of to be implemented.  One of the more popular ones is conducting surveys. 

 

Customers will need an easy way to gather survey-related data from either their customers or partners or others, and will need to report on this information to see how they are doing.  Setting up an application to do this is relatively straightforward and reports can be easily created to display insights either in tabular or graphic format.

 

The first thing you will need to do is create a table for storing the results. This is the easiest part.  You may want to link this table to a customers table or elsewhere, but for now, let's keep the table on it's own.

 

Next, grab your survey and take a look at the questions that make up your survey.  Some will be questions that require a user to place a rating as a response, while others may be to select from a multiple choice type field.  List out your questions in a document or spreadsheet, and then identify what types of fields they will be.  Some will be ratings, others multiple-choice, while others may be open area text answers that will require some extra space.  You'll probably want to save the date these survey results were added too.  What may or may not be needed is the identification of the respondent.  If it's possible that the responder will be a QuickBase user, then a user field will be needed.

 

After listing out these questions and their field types, start by creating the fields in the table you have started.  Don't worry about the order you enter them in, as you can reorder these on the form in a minute.  Once you have the fields created, click on the "New ___" green button so that you can view your form, this is where the survey will come to life in a few minutes.

 

Using the document where the questions and fields are listed, go through and right-click on each field in order to access the form's properties – you want to customize the form here, the fourth option in the menu list ("Edit the properties of this form element").  For each form element, you will simply click on the "Use Alternate Label Text" checkbox and type in what your survey question is for that field, where the answer or response, will go.

 

Take time to get used to this editing process, and reorder your survey questions appropriately.

 

You may want to also create formula fields that summarize respondent replies, so try to name your fields in a manner that makes sense to you, the administrator.  You'll use these field names in formulas and reports, so it helps to keep them simple and straightforward.

 

For further information on surveys, please take a look in our application exchange for several excellent examples!

 

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Sean Padian
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