Beginning Tutorial - What's New

EZSurvey 2005 for the Internet: New Features

EZSurvey 2005 for the Internet provides yet more power, more transparently, in this version than ever before! Both existing and new owners will find that form creation maintains its logical clarity while offering new capacities, so that users will find the same ease of use as in the past. EZSurvey 2005 continues with its lead as the most powerful and easiest end-user survey-type program available today.

New and improved capabilities in EZSurvey allow you to create a survey and publish it in six different media types; numerous new form aids let you more swiftly design surveys, especially the more complex ones; data collection is still faster for large surveys; and yet more security protections are available to secure the entire data gathering process. The EZSurvey Personal Server continues to provide new advantages for design checking, and for data collection as well, such as for mobile use. ODBC support is extended in the Pro version, and Unicode support enhanced for other alphabets. The new EZSurvey Enterprise Stand Alone Mail Server makes even faster work out of participant notification or for email surveys. With all these improvements the same low price is maintained!

Some of the exciting new enhancements and capacities are listed below.

New and improved Form Design aids:

• Import Questions (Pro only) provides a big speed design addition. Questions can be imported from a "Form", "Document", or "Database" in one transfer.
• The Generic Login plug-in adds the option to have a login page and a single password to the survey. Multiple persons can enter the survey if they have the password, but no others. This capacity is in addition to the robust individual access restriction login present in EZSurvey.
• Improved designs for the Template Editor (Pro only) includes new modern design templates, while now CSS and DHTML work with the templates.
• Improved Active Preview window to see the HTML display of your design as you type.
• The Export Response List quickly exports the response list to a text file.
• Recode Responses will quickly recode all of the responses to any question in the database.
• Duplicate/Delete Section improves editing by section within the form.
• The Weighted Score Plug-in (Pro only) allows weights to be assigned to demographic questions in order to calculate means for reports, an easy way to handle a complex requirement.
• The full Preview feature is faster to use, with an improved naming scheme.
• Improved formatting for paper versions of questionnaires is now possible to allow faster paper version output if needed.
• Remove HTML provides for all HTML code to be removed at once for reporting purposes, so that report displays do not show HTML.
• Improved Unicode support extends ease of creation in a foreign language.
• Rename Fieldnames changes all fieldnames in the form to default numbering (Q1, Q2, etc.) to match the order of the questions.

Improved User Interface:

• Online Help is extended to include all new features plus an FAQ from beta testers.
• Many more error alerts are added to help guide the end user throughout EZSurvey, from the authoring process through to the reporting process.

Powerful improved Data Collection:

• The improved compiled CGI is safe, secure, and its efficient small size allows a speed that takes 25 more hits/second than standard Perl and is three times faster.
• The Generic Login plug-in adds the option to have a login page and a single password to the survey. Multiple persons can enter the survey if they have the password, but no others. This capacity is in addition to the robust individual access restriction login present in EZSurvey.
• The EZSurvey Personal Server (Pro only) has enhanced and strengthened publishing support for its use off-site or as a primary web server.
• You may use the Publish to Portable PC feature for collection on tablets and notebooks.
• The Publish to Pocket PC option improves the support for handheld, mobile delivery.
• The Short Message Service (SMS) support for feedback from mobile devices is extended, with full documentation included for the administrator.
• The EZSurvey Enterprise Stand Alone Mail Server is included free with EZSurvey, and is a full-featured email delivery program for notifications and/or email survey distribution. It is open source to allow easy modification if wanted.
• New text email and HTML email wizards make the Mail Server easy to use.

Powerful new and improved Reporting features:

• The Sum-File feature creates a .sum file that can be used for statistics when publishing to a web site. The summary statistics report and the admin CGI use the sum file. This plugin looks at the existing database and calculates all of the necessary values for the .sum file.
• The EZSurvey summary report has improved formatting, including better spacing with graphics display.
• You may create an SPSS Label file for immediate use with SPSS statistics software from within EZSurvey.

Extended Security features:

• SQL commands are hard-coded into an XML file (Pro only) on the web server to make them invulnerable to nonsense-data attacks.
• The form processor detects buffer overrun attacks and improper file names, and sends an email notification to the web site owner.
• The server's scripting processor uses an open-source, restricted-memory language that prevents modification of files, registry settings, or unauthorized database rows.
• Web data is converted into UTF-8 prior to security filtering.
• All SQL commands (Pro only) are generated in UTF-8.
• Forms over plain-text email have a user-identification code.

New and extended Database and Database Management features:

• The new Export to SQL (Pro only) plug-in lets you export all of the data in the database to SQL statements that can be imported into any SQL database.
• Export to XML (Pro only) lets you export all of the data in the database to XML format.
• General database improvement allows faster import and export of large data files.
• Greater speed and scalability (Pro only) provides improved support for ODBC connectivity.
• Extended SQL warnings and logging (Pro only) improve usage and monitoring.
• The web CGI can make a full connection to the ODBC database. (Pro only) Respondents can create new records, and update existing records.

Powerful improved support for distinct applications:

• The EZSurvey Personal Server (Pro only) can collect data in the field or when you are home. It is an alternative to publishing the survey on a major web server.
• Publishing options include Web, Email, Handheld, Kiosk, Text, and Paper.
• Distribution methods can be by web, email, laptop, kiosk, mobiles, SMS, portable hard drives, diskettes, touchscreen and paper.
• One database can be used by more than one survey. For example, if you had a regular survey and another survey formatted for section 508c compliance, both could save data to a common database.
• The online handheld PDA can save the name of a binary file. This is useful if you are doing voice recording or taking pictures.
• Follow up email messages can be sent based on previous survey responses. You can send reminders or even invitations to a new survey for those participating in an earlier survey.
• Instant Polls can be made and put on the front page of your web site. The instant poll can be a single question or multiple questions.
• EZSurvey can administer tests and after the data has been collected those tests can be scored for reporting purposes.
• Images can be included in surveys. Any image that is web accessible can be used in a survey, for questions, responses, banners, general display, and other.
• Data can be exported to SQL. (Pro only) You can take data, once it has been collected, and save it to an SQL database. See the Export to SQL plug-in description under Database.
• Questions from text can be imported quickly and in bulk now, to speed form creation. Questions can be imported from spreadsheet text format or word document text format.