Summary
We're thrilled to announce the latest version of BoardOnTrack, which includes a new feature to enhance your surveying abilities.
Here's a brief summary of what's new:
- New tab on your feature list
- Ability to build fully custom surveys, from scratch
- New Control Panel to easily manage the survey
- External participants can take the survey via shareable link
- Report can be downloaded as a CSV as well as PDF
We'll dive into the details of these changes in the following sections. Our team is confident that these updates will help you survey your various groups of stakeholders more efficiently and effectively.
New Survey Feature
Launching a New Survey
Once you click into the new survey feature, you can select the blue "+New" button to launch a new survey. Then, you'll be brought to a page where you can choose to create one from scratch. Once you begin creating surveys, you will be able to copy over any past survey created, to use as a template.
Survey Components
Surveys in BoardOnTrack are built from five components. They are:
- Section Headers. Use section headers to group questions on related topics together. All questions in a section will be on the same page as users take the survey.
- Title and Description. Use a title and description to create a subsection within a section or to give specific instructions about the following questions.
- Multiple Choice Question. This is a block containing a single multiple-choice question.
- Radio Choice Grid. This is a block of several questions all using the same multiple-choice answers. Most surveys make extensive use of this component.
-
Rich Text Area. This is a block where users can type free text.
Here's what each tool does:
Toggles the view of that component from the editor to what it looks like when taking a survey.
Makes a copy of the component just below the current one. This is especially valuable for Radio Choice Grids where you will want to use the same answer choices throughout your survey.
Deletes the component. You will be asked to confirm your deletion because the action cannot be undone. Note that deleting a section will also delete all components in that section.
The Required Tool shown below allows you to set whether an answer is required for this question (or for every question in a grid).
The blue plus sign, shown below after it has been pressed, allows you to add a new component.
This tool appears only on section header components and opens a dialog box that allows you to reorder the sections within your survey.
This icon appears at the top of each component and allows you to drag the component to a new location within the survey.
Editing an existing component
Editing an existing component is very easy. Simply click on it, and remember you can click the toggle tool to easily switch from editing it to viewing it as it will look to those taking the survey.
Using Each Component
Section Headers
Section Headers have two functions. They provide a title and description for a group of questions, AND they define pages for your survey. All questions within a section will be on one page.
Title and Description
Title and Description components are similar to section headers in that they provide only a title and a description (i.e. no questions), but they do not create a new page in your survey.
Multiple Choice Question
The Multiple Choice Question component includes a single question with an unlimited (virtually) number of radio button choices. Respondents will choose one answer, of course. We recommend using this component sparingly because too many individual questions make for a busy survey.
Radio Choice Grid
The Radio Choice Grid component should form the bulk of your surveys. It includes:
- A title for defining the topic of the related questions. Demonstrates Integrity in the example below
- A set of responses. Users will choose one response for each question. These are the column headers (I Don't Know and Strongly Disagree through Strongly Agree) in the example below.
- A set of questions which will be displayed together.
The image above is how a radio choice grid looks as the survey is being taken. Below is the same component being edited. The red asterisk above, by the way, indicates to the respondent that the questions in this grid are required. You can see the required option is turned on below.
Important Considerations For Radio Choice Grids
First, ratings should generally represent a continuum that improves from top to bottom in edit view. I Don't Know should always be at the top (left-most as surveys are being taken). That arrangement will make the values improve from left to right for respondents taking the survey and in the report.
Second, make sure you use consistent column values throughout your survey. BoardOnTrack will summarize your answers at the top of the report, and the report will be much easier to read with as few different Radio Choice Grid answer sets as possible.
Rich Text Area
The Rich Text Area component gives users the opportunity to write commentary as part of the survey. The BoardOnTrack standard survey uses this component to allow respondents to provide context and justification for their grid answers as well as to ask some broader questions in the final section.
Keep in mind that in the report, BoardOnTrack will anonymize all rich text area comments.
BoardOnTrack also recommends encouraging respondents to be brief and structured in these sections. Keep in mind that survey managers have to read every word of every comment submitted.
Managing the Survey
Control Panel Components
Name
Design
Participants
Open for responses?
Result Viewers
My Response
Results
Report
Who Can Access the New Survey Feature?
How can I learn more?
You can contact your Governance Coach or reach out via chat if you have questions.
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