Enquette

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Description:

The Enquette consists basically of one or more pairs of question item and evaluation control, eventually organized in more layers. It either lets the visitor to choose his votes or it displays results statistics together with distribution graphics.

The Enquette can be implemented either as a component (menu) or as a part of Joomla content (article). An important feature is the export in the Office Open XML format (e. g. MS Excel) enabling further processing with external tools.

Administrate Enquette:

  1. Have a look at the Enquette Anatomy
  2. Purchase and Install Enquette package
  3. Create Enquette Menu, Create Enquette Module or Append Enquette to an Article
  4. Set up Enquette
  5. Optionally, Invite selected respondents
  6. Download / upload Enquette
  7. Work up results with Excel

On the Enquette Setup page, at the Tab Enquette, you can download or upload the Enquette content. This enables to port the Enquette to other page or site, to work Enquette results up with Excel or other applications or to prepare the survey on a local machine and upload it - ready to use - to the production site.

There are two possible file formats used for the Enquette porting: the pure XML format containing just data necessary, and the Excel XML format (Office Open XML) enabling desktop results inspection and further processing as well as modifications and uploading.

See Download Enquette for details on downloading and / or Upload Enquette on uploading the Enquette. See Excel Enquette for more details on Excel Enquette representation. See Set up Enquette Local for modifying Enquette local and uploading to the site.

Having a long list of items to be evaluated, adding them manually piece-by piece, formatting each to a uniform HTML layout, maybe even in more languages, can be a pretty monotone and time consuming task. A more creative and efficient way is to set up the Enquette on the desktop machine and then upload it, more or less ready-to-use, on the server. A downloaded Excel Enquette offers the appropriate base.

Suppose we have a list of employees with First name, Last name and Position like this:

  A B C
1 First Name Last Name Position
2 Martin Smith Sales Manager
3 Victoria Peabody Key Account Manager
4 John Gonzales Project Manager

They are to be evaluated in a poll on criteria like Friendly, Dynamic and Reliable.

Suppose further, there are photographs uploaded on the server in the directory /images/company/employees, each named uniformly by [FirstName].[LastName].jpg.

An exigent task is to design the Layer Items (Questions). Lets create the Enquette on the server, design just one Item for one person as a template (remember, the Enquette Prefix enables specific CSS definitions) and then download the Enquette as Excel XML. On the Items worksheet, you will find something like this (emploee specific parts marked red):

  A  ~ G H
1 item_id   etype text:en-gb
2 469   0 <div class="card"> <p><img src="/images/company/employees/Martin.Smith.jpg" alt="Sales Manager" class="picture" /><span class="first">Martin</span><span class="last">Smith</span></p> <p><span class="position">Sales Manager</span></p> </div>
3        

Now, add new worksheet named Employees and copy the employees list there. Then, on the Items worksheet, edit the H2 text as a formula, substituting emphasized text parts by references to Employees worksheet (marked blue). Remember that in formulas, the literal quote character " must be escaped as "":

  A ~ G H
1 item_id   etype text:en-gb
2 496   0 ="<div class=""card""> <p><img src="/"images/company/employees/" & Employees!$A2 & "." & Employees!$B2 & ".jpg"" alt=""" & Employees!$C2 & """ class=""picture"" /><span class=""first"">" & Employees!$A2 & "</span><span class=""last"">" & Employees!$B2 & "</span></p> <p><span class=""position"">" & Employees!$C2 & "</span></p> </div>"
3        

After you have entered the formula and hit Enter, the text in H2 should look exactly the same as the downloaded one. Just when selecting the cell, you see the formula in the Excel's fx field.

Finally, copy the Item row downwards corresponding to Employees worksheet rows count. For new items, set negative item_id like -1, -2 ... (as positive IDs could eventually rewrite existing records). The worksheet could look like this (again, employee specific parts marked red):

  A ~ G H
1 item_id   etype text:en-gb
2 496   0 <div class="card"> <p><img src="/images/company/employees/Martin.Smith.jpg" alt="Sales Manager" class="picture" /><span class="first">Martin</span><span class="last">Smith</span></p> <p><span class="position">Sales Manager</span></p> </div>
3 -1   0 <div class="card"> <p><img src="/images/company/employees/Victoria.Peabody.jpg" alt="Key Accounter" class="picture" /><span class="first">Victoria</span><span class="last">Peabody</span></p> <p><span class="position">Key Accounter</span></p> </div>
3 -2   0 <div class="card"> <p><img src="/images/company/employees/John.Gonzales.jpg" alt="Project Manager" class="picture" /><span class="first">John</span><span class="last">Gonzales</span></p> <p><span class="position">Project Manager</span></p> </div>

The rest of settings, like Evaluation Criteria etc., is easier to manage on the Enquette administration direct. Or see Setting up Evaluation Criteria how to create it with the Excel Enquette.

When ready, save the file and upload it to the Enquette site back as an Update. Manage other settings, save the Enquette and open it in the front end. It could look like this:

Uploaded

Do not upload Update more times if the file contains new records with negative IDs, since they would be inserted repeatedly. Save the Enquette and download the actual version instead to continue with setting up and updating.

Lets mention at least briefly how to create Evaluation Criteria on the desktop machine.

As Employees should be evaluated by multiple criteria, check that the Layer singleCrit field on Layers worksheet is set to 0. Remember the tab_id for further use.

Then design the Evaluation Schema. On the MarkSchemata worksheet, first add new row. Name it e.g. Reported in the column name:en-gb (you can ignore the column name) and set the schema_id, let say, to -100 (as negative values identify new objects not saved yet). Set the Reported module_id field to any non-zero number if you don't intent to use the schema globally or let it empty otherwise.

Then, on the MarkValues worksheet, design the schema's values. Number mval_id with negative IDs like -1, -2... and set schema_id to -100 for the Reported schema in all values designed, like (fields mval_mark and mval_name:en-gb) 0: "not really", 1: "more or less", 2: "indeed".

The last step is to assign Evaluation Criteria to the Enquette Layer. On the Criteria worksheet, add a row for each one. Set tab_id to the tab_id from the Layers worksheet, schema_id to -100 for the Reported schema and etype to 0 for DropDown in all criteria rows desired, in this case (field name:en-gb) "Friendly", "Dynamic" and "Responsible".