Creating a Survey in MOSS 2007

You may have created surveys in SPS 2003. Surveys are also available in MOSS 2007 and the best new feature is "Branching". You can skip to a specific question based on the user response. This helps a lot in creating *intelligent* surveys. Another new feature is workflow. Now, you can enable workflow in your surveys. Let's create a survey and see how branching works:

1. Open a site.

2. Click on "Surveys" in Document Center. This will open the following page. Any surveys already created in your site are available on this page. Click the "Create"  button to go to the web part selection page.

3. The following page will open when you click the "Create" button (see figure in step 2). Select "Survey" in Tracking Section.

4. In the new page that opens, give a name to your survey, add some meaningful description. There are a couple of other options that you can select, for example, select "Yes" if you want to show user names in survey results or select "Yes" if you want to allow multiple responses by a single user. Click "Next" to go next screen.

5. Here you can define your questions. For demo purposes, I added the following as my first question:

Does MOSS 2007 contain useful features?

Enter "Yes" and "No" on separate lines as shown below. The type you selected for this question was "Choice". These options should be displayed as radio buttons. You can show them in drop down as well. It doesn't make any difference.

Click "Next Question" to add another question. Next question is:

Which features do you like best?

Options are: (Radio buttons)

a. Document Libraries
b. Workflow
c. Custom Lists

Click "Next Question" to add following question:

Your comments about built-in workflow? (Multiline text  box)

Click "Next Question" to add following question:

Why do you think that MOSS 2007 doesn't contain useful features? (Multiline text box)

Click "Finish". Next, you will see the following page:

6. Click on "Permissions for this survey". You will see following screen. Click users here and assign permissions. Click "Add Users" (Action link) to add users.

Assign "Approval" rights if you intend to use workflow.

7. Click "Settings > Survey Settings" to change settings.

8. Click "Advanced Settings".

9. Make sure following options are selected (see figure shown below):

a. All responses
b. Only their own.

10. On the settings page, click the first question to add branching.

In the branching section (bottom of the page), you will notice their are two drop downs, one against "Yes" which is your first option in question 1 and the second against "No" which is your second option in question 1. In "Yes", select "Which features do you like best" and in "No", select "Why do you think that MOSS 2007 doesn't contain useful features?". Click OK.

Now click on second question in the list. Second question should be "Which features do you like best?". You will see that there are three options available in the branching section: Document libraries, workflow, custom lists. Against all three options, select "Your comments about built-in workflow?".

Click on question 3 which should be "Why do you think that MOSS 2007 doesn't contain useful features?". In branching section, select "Your comments about builtin workflow?" against the "Any Response".

Your branching is complete. Run your survey to test branching options.

11. You can also change the order of the questions.

Depending on the option selected by the user in question 1, second question will be shown accordingly.