Sending Surveys Through LimeSurvey

Sending Surveys Through LimeSurvey

For further assistance please reach out to Frank Stocker

1) Now that we have created our survey, we need to add participants. Navigate to the “Survey Menu” section and select “Survey Participants”.

Upon selection, the following screen is displayed. All surveys created default to open-access mode. This means that anyone can access the survey and complete it. This mode is used on websites or any publicly accessed location where the survey can be hosted and completed by anyone.

Closed-access mode allows the sender to provide access codes to the participants and the survey can only be accessed through the participant’s email address. This is a focused approach, used when we have a known group of participants we want to include in the survey.

For our purposes, closed-access mode should be selected.

Upon selecting closed-access mode, a participant table is created. Select “Continue”.

2) We are redirected back to the “Survey Participants” section. We are now able to upload the .csv file with our recipient’s information or add recipients manually. We will be uploading a .csv file so select “Create” and select “CSV File”.

3) The .csv file has 3 mandatory fields which are named firstname, lastname, and email. These headings should be on the first line of the file. Add all your participants and save the .csv file.

4) Now that the .csv file is created, we can upload the file by selecting “Choose File” and navigating to where you saved the file.

5) After the .csv file is selected, scroll down the page, and select “Upload”.

6) A confirmation shows the total number of records in the .csv file as well as the number of records imported. If these do not match, there is a recipient missing one of the minimum requirements (firstname, lastname, email). Review your file for errors and reupload. If everything is good, select “Browse Participants” to browse our list of recipients.

7) Our recipients are listed at the bottom of the page but before we are able to send the survey, we need to select “Generate Access Codes” to assign each recipient a specific access code.

8) Select “Yes” on the resulting screen to generate access codes for all participants that do not have one. Please note, after the survey is initially sent out, you can add additional recipients and when you generate access codes again, only those without codes will be assigned one. All other previous recipients are unaffected. A confirmation of the number of access codes created is displayed.

9) We are directed back to the “Survey Participants” screen. Here we can send out our survey to our participants. Select “Invitations & Reminders” then select “Send Email Invitation”.

10) The email template for invitations is shown along with the “subject” and “from” fields. These can be edited directly here, or we can go back in our settings and edit the default settings for these fields. We are now ready to send the invites. Select “Send Invitations”.

A confirmation will be displayed on the screen indicating if all the invitations were sent.

Select “Continue”.

11) We are redirected to the “Survey Participants” page. Data is displayed for each participant which includes invitation sent date, if a reminder is sent, reminder count, and if completed or not.