I'm happy to announce the release, well, the beta release, of the 3rd version of Soundings, my ColdFusion-based survey application. You can download it now from SVN (http://svn.riaforge.org/soundings). My plan is to let folks test it out and if things work well, issue a formal release next week. Be sure to read the release notes and note that the docs have not yet been updated. So with that being said, what's new, and how can you test it?
The first change is to the security system. The administrator now has two kinds of users - administrators and survey creators. As you can guess, survey creators just have the ability to work with surveys and questions. All surveys they create belong to them and they can't see surveys belong to other users. This means the administrator can set up accounts for various users and let them create their own surveys.
You can now create templates. Templates are simply a header and footer. Surveys can chose to use a template. This means you won't see the lovely blue skin wrapping your survey. It also means multiple people at one organization can skin their survey as they see fit. Along with this, surveys can also be hidden from the main list of public surveys on the non-protected web page.
Surveys can be embedded on a web page. I hope this works. It seems to. Here is an example:
I removed the live demo due to it not being set up on my new server.
Reporting has been updated. The main update here is the addition of date filters. For a busy survey this lets you generate quicker results by limiting the amount of days checked. I also fixed a few small bugs in the same area as well.
A few notes. I have not run VarScoper on the code yet. I ran into a few missing var statements while working for v3, so I plan on doing a formal check right before the final release. Secondly, if you want to test Soundings v3, I'll be happy to give you an account on the demo install here. Just shoot me an email via the contact form. I will not promise the demo version will stay up forever, but I hope to have an alternative that is a bit more permanent early next year.
Archived Comments
sorry didn't get chance to help with testing - if something doesn't work then just blame sharp!
I already blame him. His pumpkill roll is making me fat.
Not to be "that guy", but have you thought about using labels with your form fields?
http://www.bryantwebconsult...
I think this is an excellent idea, at least for the questions. Can you file a ER for it at RIAForge? I may not do it for 3.0, but would want to do it soon.
Yep. I should have thought about the issue tracker. That is done now.
Thanks.
Steve sent me the label fix, and it is checked into SVN and pushed to the demo. You can see it in the iframe above.
Thanks Steve!
OK... so you are looking for movies to watch over the holidays! lol
What methodology did you write this application in?
@JF: None really. Just something simple. Well, I think survey view/edit is kinda cool/complex at the question level, but the rest is pretty vanilla.
Question:
I have not dug through all the comments so the answer may already be here. Why does the survey not go to the next page all the time. I have two or three testers on a survey and not all can go past the first page??
Did they not answer required questions? Are you running the latest build?
Yes I am using the latest build on the ria site. All the required forms are filled out.
Check it out at http://survey.webecoupons.c... or on the site at http://www.gasn.org/home/su...
I can't reproduce this. Were they using one particular browser, like IE?
It seems if I put the server in the trusted list it works. So what do you supose could cause the security session to hang. I goto a medium which is the lowest IE 7 can go on internet it does not consitently work. Any suggestions.
Can you post screen caps of the admin panel? I want to know what that looks like before I install this.
Unfortunately I'm having issues with RIAForge and image uploads so I can't post it there. You can get a few screen shots here:
www.coldfusionjedi.com/down...
That link won't last when I move the server.
FYI... example isn't working:
Datasource soundings could not be found.
I didn't set it up when I moved servers. Not sure I'll get around to it. Best thing is to download it and play with it. :)
Will soundings 3 work with mura? Of course right now I can get the plugin to work.
No idea. :)