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Using Interviewer with synchronisation

It is possible to synchronise surveys and responses between Snap WebHost and your device when there is an internet connection available. This means that published offline surveys can be downloaded to your device and responses uploaded to Snap WebHost. You can then import the responses from Snap WebHost to your desktop and analyse them. Click for more information about the Snap Mobile Anywhere add-on.

To do this you need:

  • An account on Snap WebHost
  • Offline interviewing enabled on your account
  • The latest version of Snap Interviewer installed on the device (10.19 or later).

You must then:

  1. Publish your offline survey.
  2. Upload the published zip file to Snap WebHost.
  3. Log into your account on your mobile device.

The device will download available surveys so you can conduct interviews. Responses are automatically uploaded to Snap WebHost and deleted from the device.

If you are do not have a connection to the internet (for example, you are in a communications blackspot) you can synchronise with the server via your PC or transfer responses directly to your PC.

 

Publishing a survey to Snap WebHost

Background

You must set up Snap Interviewer on the device with:

  • Researcher account name and license number.
  • A list of users and passwords for Snap Interviewer.

When you open Snap Interviewer, it checks to see if there is an internet connection. If so, it logs into the synchronisation service on Snap WebHost and checks for surveys that need downloading. It checks again at regular intervals, so your surveys will be updated automatically.

When a questionnaire is completed, the response is sent up to the synchronisation service. Interviewer checks regularly to see if there are responses that need to be synchronised.

Summary of steps

This worksheet describes how to use Snap Interviewer with synchronisation for a kiosk survey. The steps would be similar for other offline surveys, but setting up Interviewer on a Windows Mobile smartphone/PDA is slightly different. It assumes that you are adding an offline edition to an existing survey. (This allows you to combine the results from the kiosk with the results from a paper questionnaire.)

  1. Create and publish an offline survey (for a kiosk)
  2. Upload your offline survey to Snap WebHost
  3. Start the survey on the kiosk
  4. Download the response data and import it into Snap for analysis

Create and publish an offline survey (for a kiosk)

  1. Open the Questionnaire window of your survey in Snap Professional.
  2. Click Editions and templates button to display the Editions and Style Templates dialog box.
  3. Click [New] to create a new edition. A New Survey Edition dialog appears.

    Adding a kiosk edition highlighted

  4. Select Offline as the Publication Medium.
  5. Select Kiosk from the second drop-down list for a kiosk edition (select PDA for a smartphone/PDA edition etc).
  6. The edition Name will change to Offline:Kiosk. Change this if you wish.
  7. Select the Load Style radio button. The correct default style for that edition will appear in the selection list.
  8. Click [OK].
  9. The new edition of the questionnaire will have been added to the list on the Editions and Style Templates dialog.
  10. Click [OK] to return to the Questionnaire window.
  11. Select File|Publish to publish your edition. Make a note of where the edition is published.QP: Output properties of offline surveys
  12. Select Replies in the left-hand column.

    QP: Output properties of offline surveys

  13. Select the Sync with server radio button.
  14. Click [Publish] to publish the survey.

Upload your offline survey to Snap WebHost

  1. Log into your account on Snap WebHost.

    When you have logged in successfully, Snap WebHost displays the list of surveys in your account

  2. Select Upload a new survey to display the Upload new survey dialog.

  3. Browse to find the .zip file for the survey in the folder you specified as the Path when you published the survey.
  4. Click [Upload Archive] to upload the survey to Snap WebHost.
  5. When Snap WebHost has uploaded the survey, a message appears to confirm that the survey has been uploaded. Click the [Close] button.

    The list of surveys is updated, showing the new survey. Note that because it is not a Snap WebHost survey, you cannot click on it to examine it in Snap WebHost.

Start the survey on the kiosk

This assumes that you have already set up and installed Snap Interviewer on your device.

  1. Start Snap Interviewer.
  2. Click if you want to make the survey take up the whole screen of the kiosk.
  3. Select File|Open to display your surveys. You will be asked for your username and password (these will have been set up when Snap Interviewer was installed on the kiosk).

    Mobile interviewer: retrieving responses

  4. Enter your username and password and click [OK].

    Mobile interviewer: retrieving responses

    You will be presented with the synchronisation dialog.

  5. Click [Open Survey] to display the list of available surveys.

    Mobile interviewer: retrieving responses

  6. Select the survey you wish to open and click [OK].
  7. If the survey you want is not yet available click [Check for New Surveys] to confirm that the kiosk has copies of all the latest surveys.

Download the response data and import it into Snap Professional for analysis

When responses are submitted to the kiosk, they will be uploaded to the synchronisation service automatically.

Log into your account on Snap WebHost. There will now be a new link to download Respondent Data.

  1. Click the Respondent Data link. A window opens giving you the option of downloading your data or deleting it.

  2. Click the Download completes link to download the responses. Save the file to your computer and keep a note of the folder where you have stored it.
  3. It is a good idea to have a standard folder into which you download response data for each survey. Note that, by default, the file will be saved under the name of the survey and the time/date of the download.
  4. Open the survey in Snap Professional.
  5. Open the Data Entry window Data Entry window button for the survey and choose File | Import. The Data Import dialog appears.
  6. Set the Format to be MAIL format from text files.
  7. Set the Folder to be the same folder as specified when you downloaded the data from Snap WebHost.

  8. Click [OK] to import the responses.

Conclusion

This worksheet has described how to publish and run offline survey for a kiosk that is running Snap Interviewer with synchronisation.

For information about how to set up mobile interviewer with synchronisation for a smartphone/PDA, see Setting up Mobile Interviewer with Synchronisation

For full details about Snap Interviewer, see Introduction to Snap Interviewer Software.

For points to keep in mind when designing surveys for mobile devices, see the worksheet: Preparing surveys for smartphones.

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