In these difficult times, we hope everyone is safe & healthy. We are happy to present our latest feature release called Checkpoint.
Report Viewer filtering
We are sure that you are using our Report Share feature to great effect, allowing you to easily make your survey results available to your audience. Today we introduce a powerful new enhancement to the Report Viewer - the ability for those who access your reports to be able to filter the data. They do not need a Spark Chart account to do this, and their settings are unique to their browser session only (linked by a cookie).
To give you the control & flexibility you need over this feature it can be enabled for survey respondents, dates and/or questions, and there are 3 modes available:
- None: This is the default mode, and as the name suggests, report viewers cannot filter the data. You may also enable a setting to show what filters are applied.
- Limited: The viewers can set filters only on items that don't have a filter created in the report by you.
- Full: The viewers can set & override any filters in the report.
To support this feature we utilise browser cookies. To ensure that user privacy is in full compliance with various international laws such as GDPR, if you enable Limited or Full filtering, the viewer user will be asked to accept a cookie (which they can remove at any time). You can modify the text of this cookie notice in the Project > Customise > Language screen. We have provided translated version for all languages that we support. To allow you to track who is using your report filtering, you can also enable an option to capture the viewer users geographic location (much like participant information capture).
We are very excited about this feature as it will allow you to focus on gathering more responses & planning around the results while saving you report building time.
Please note: If your running survey has custom language / labels enabled and you want to use Viewer Filters, please go to your Customise > Language setting and apply the default labels in the Report Viewer section. Any new surveys (or those without custom language / labels) will pick up the new text automatically.
Validated Text questions
You can now create questions that can be validated against specific formats. While we will be adding more options as we go, you can now ask your participants for the following specific data:
- Text: Email, URL, letters only, letters & numbers, text with minimum length, text with maximum length, text in length in a specified range
- Numbers: Any number, whole number, decimal number, even number, odd number, positive number, negative number, percentage, number with minimum value, number with maximum value, maximum in a specified range
- Date & Time: YYYY/MM/DD format, DD/MM/YYYY format, MM/DD/YYYY format, time in a variety of formats
- Special: HTML colour value, IP address (in IPv4, IPv6 or any format), random string (for example password generation, using a simple, medium or complex format)
Another powerful addition to the toolkit, we are sure you'll agree. To create one of these questions, simply select "Validated Text" when adding a question to a survey template and choose what data you want to capture.
Please note: If your running survey has custom language / labels enabled and you want to use Validated Questions, please go to your Customise > Language setting and apply the default label for Wrong format message in the Survey Progress section. Any new surveys (or those without custom language / labels) will pick up the new text automatically.
Custom error messages for individual questions
While a generic error message for required questions is great for quickly creating surveys, sometimes you may want to add a custom error for a specific question. You can now define a unique error for each question in the Edit Question screen in Survey Templates. This will be particularly handy when using our Validated Text questions.
360° Feedback feature enhancements
360 degree feedback is an important leadership development process where individual leaders or employees receive feedback from people they work with. Mostly, the feedback process is provided anonymously and confidentially. Typically, the people providing feedback include the participant's manager, staff who report to the participant, their peer group and other stakeholders they closely interact with. Your Spark Chart account includes 360 degree feedback survey templates for a range of roles. Customised surveys can also be set up easily for any type of 360 project .
Until now, 360 degree feedback processes have been possible using Group Links for each 360 degree feedback recipient. We have quite a few clients doing this.
As the first step towards a more comprehensive 360 degree feedback process in Spark Chart, we have created a new deployment option under the DISTRIBUTE & TRACK menu area in the project menu. We have added a new 360° Recipients menu. Use this menu to add 360° recipients and create shareable survey links for each 360° recipient. Any surveys completed from a link will be attached to the individual 360° recipient.
Furthermore, as part of our reporting and report sharing changes, reports can now be filtered by selecting 360° Recipients to see all the feedback and survey responses for that person. So you can create and share individual feedback reports for each 360° Recipient. The new filtering feature in shared reports will allow the recipient or their coach to filter the individual's feedback to look for trends across their individual feedback. They do not need to be a Spark Chart user to see and filter the feedback.
At a later date, we are planning to release new reporting options, including comparison reports, to further enhance the 360 degree feedback process.