Home | ideas.limesurvey.org

Submit your idea

Submit your idea

Idea sandbox

Popular ideas

Ideas in development

Ideas in development

Implemented ideas

Implemented ideas

Popular ideas

Here are random ideas about LimeSurvey.

Simplifying integration with other tools

Written by jeseahed the 15 Apr 11 at 23:47. Related project: 1.x all. New

The main problem with Lime survey is that groups and questions have all different IDs. If you copy a survey, the survey ID will change (and this is normal) but all the question IDs and the group IDs will also change.

This way of working makes Lime more difficult to integrate with outside applications. It also prevents having features like a bank of questions which one could pick into.

Example: I am passing company name parameter from another application (my ERP for instance) to a given question in one survey. I will use the SGQA Identifier which will be for instance 12345X1X1001.
Now, if I duplicate the survey into another one, and simply need to change two or 3 questions, lime will necessarily rename the survey ID (which is normal), but will also change the group ID and all question ID. What I passed to 12345X1X1001 will now need to be passed to 54321X2X1002 for instance. This means that from the external application, I must maintain a different map per survey - which is time consuming.

If Lime would not automatically increment the group and question numbers, passing (and retrieving) parameters would be far easier because only the survey ID would need to be changed. This would mean that the company name of all of my surveys could be passed to DDDDDX1X1001 with DDDDD being the survey ID to point to. In that situation, I would be able to copy the map of a survey to the next and simply change the mapping for questions which have truly changed versus the original survey copy.

I understand there might not be an easy way of achieving such purpose, at least I wanted to place that rationale in the pool of ideas as it is important for Lime to be integrable with other tools. I believe its current structure is a barrier towards that objective.

0
votes

equal

down

Solution #1: Alias & Structural change?

Written by jeseahed the 15 Apr 11 at 23:47.

I see two paths; probably one short term, and one long term.

Short term:
- implementing an "alias ID" field per question in lime which could be used instead of the SGQA identifier. The alias would need to be unique per questions within a same survey but could be found as well in other surveys. The alias ID would need to be enabled to be passed via URLsas an alternative soution to the SGQA identifier.

Long term:
- having reflexion on the GID and QID way of working to see whether there is not a better way of handling unicity towards being less complex in maintaining integration with external applications.

Add a comment or propose a solution >>

Missing admin interface brute force protection

Written by iboguev the 15 Mar 10 at 07:41. Related project: 1.x all. New

Hi,

I am using LimeSurvey to capture and store some relatively sensitive/interesting data. I am a bit concerned that the application doesn't provide (as far as I am aware) any built in features that will discourage potential admin login brute force attacks.

1
votes

equal

down

Solution #1: Security Enhancement - admin interface brute force protection

Written by iboguev the 15 Mar 10 at 07:41.

It would be great if some sort of brute force admin interface password guessing prevention mechanism is put in place. Examples of it would be to have the attacked account locked out for X minutes after a number of failed authentication attempts are detected.

Or the authentication process can be automatically delayed with XX seconds if a brute force attack is detected. This will be enough to slowdown an attacker to a level where the brute force attack would not be feasible. This can be combined with password complexity rules and will have minimal user impact.

An additional feature can be to send an email alert to the admin if brute force attack is detected.

Add a comment or propose a solution >>

Question Type: Array with text box behind each labels table

Written by LuK123 the 14 Jul 10 at 16:36. Global category: Question types. New

Hello,

we use your program in our company. We are working on a project and need some assistance with a specific question type.

We use an array(Yes/No). But we need behind of each column (labels table) a text box, in order to make some notes, or to justify each answer wether "yes" or "no".

Is it possible that you create such a question type for us?

Cheers

-4
votes

equal

down

Add a comment or propose a solution >>

Add a text for abscissa and ordinate

Written by Nickko the 12 Feb 11 at 11:05. Related project: 1.x all. New

Chart have no indication of abscissa and ordinate represent.
A short text for X axe and Y axe maybe usefull.

0
votes

equal

down

0
votes

equal

down

Add a comment or propose a solution >>

Confirmation codes vor vote verification

Written by eckes the 14 Nov 09 at 21:19. Related project: 1.x all. New

If one uses LimeSurvey for Voting it would be good if one can publish the list of votes at the end, so each voter can check, if his vote is recorded correctly.

For this to work, the user should receive a code under which the vote is recorded. This code should be different from the token, since otherwise the token sender can correlate the vote to the email address.

It must also be ennsured that the code cannot be issued twice by LimeSurvey.

-2
votes

equal

down

Solution #1: Generate Vote Confirmation codes as hashes

Written by eckes the 14 Nov 09 at 21:19.

In order to avoid that a malicious limesurvey installation can give the same vote-code to multiple users it makes sense to generate the vote-code with voter specific data and a random secret.

I am aware that not all users can verify it, but there is still a good changce to spot problems for interested voters.

This would look like this:

Your vote will be documented in the public list like this:

VoteId | Votes
8edb010327bffc70dc2c | 0001: yes 0002: no

The VoteId above is generated personally for you. You can verify this, because we used the following method to generate it:

cut20(sha256("berndeckenfels 1446hhhfdgdfg545"))

(I.e. using your token, appending a random string, calculating the SHA-256 checksum and using the first 20 characters of the hex representation.

On Unix you can do:
echo "berndeckenfels 1446hhhfdgdfg545" | sha256 | cut -b1-20

Now:
voter can check if the published sheet contains vote
voter is shure LimeSurvey cant assign the code to two votes
voter is shure that the code which is published is not related to the token and nobody (besides limesurvey who generated the random number and stored the code in database) can associate it with the user.

(In my example the token is user name, but of course it would be a random string in most cases).

Add a comment or propose a solution >>

Tics for slider layout

Written by apps the 2 Feb 10 at 10:06. Related project: 1.x all. New

Tics (aka tic marks) should be visible under the slider bar.

See this sketch: http://img38.imageshack.us/img38/5295/10403feb10095848.gif

benefits: easy read, make it clear it's a slider with discrete values, catch where the handle is in respect to left and right limits.

Details:
type = multiple numerical input
options:
use slider layout = 1
slider min = 0
slider max = 10
slider accurancy = 1

11
votes

equal

down

See the 1 comments or propose a solution >>

Email results of survey to selectable address / protect email addresses

Written by mjm4842 the 11 Nov 10 at 21:20. Related project: 1.x all. New

Thank you for making LimeSurvey available to the Internet community. I have a great appreciation for all of the effort that has gone into developing this application and as such I would like to contribute by proposing an idea and including a solution.

I am trying to have the results of a survey emailed to the a person listed in one of the questions. I am using the INSERTANS:... tag in the "email response to" field. So far this works in accordance with the documentation at:

http://docs.limesurvey.org/tiki-index.php?page=Creating+a+new+survey#Notificati on_amp_Data_Management

Ideally I would like to just display the names or job role of the recipient and not their actual email address so as to protect it from automated email address harvesters.

Here is a sample situation: A medical clinic with 20 doctors is conducting a survey. Each doctor wants to receive a copy of a completed survey from their patient. Although I could create 20 identical surveys at 20 different URL's, it would make more sense to just have one survey and have the respondent pick their doctor's name from a list.

Another reason to only want one survey is that I still want the results to be gathered into a single database so that I can generate reports and statistics for the clinic where the 20 doctors work.

0
votes

equal

down

Solution #1: Adding flexibility to an email address field.

Written by mjm4842 the 11 Nov 10 at 21:20.

Ideally there should be an email address field where we could specify both the name and the email address in two separate fields so that only the actual name would be displayed.

One quick fix to this problem is to modify the index.php file. Although this fix will not result in the email address being hidden, it will add the ability to specify both a name and email address in the same field, and to disguise or encode the email address itself.

By adding the following code, you get the following new functionality:

1) You can use "(at)", "(dot)" and insert spaces anywhere you want in the email address. For example:
ideas(at)lime survey(dot)org

2) You can specify an email address which is hex encoded. It's not a sophisticated encoding. For example, ideas@limesurvey.org would be 6964656173406c696d657375727665792e6f7267 (not case sensitive)

3) You can specify both a name and an email address by placing the email address between square brackets. For example: Great Ideas [ideas@limesurvey.org]

NOTE: You can use any combination of the above three options. Of course the hex version of the address is only useful if you combine it with #3 above. For example:

Great Ideas [6964656173406c696d657375727665792e6f7267]

So, here is how to implement this solution:

==== File to be modified: index.php ====

STEP 1: Add the following function right above the "sendsubmitnotification" function:

function extractemailaddress($address) // by Michael Milette (2010-10-27)

// eliminate everything outside of and including square brackets, if applicable
$start = strpos($address,'[');
if ($start > 0 && $start < strlen($address))
$end = strpos($address,']',$start+1);
if ($start > 0 && $start+1 < $end-1)
$address = substr($address,$start+1,$end-$start-1);

// Decode back to string if the email address is hex encoded
if (ctype_xdigit($address))
$address = preg_replace('#(\w)(\w)#e', "chr(hexdec('$1$2'))", $address);

// replace (at) with @, the (dot) with . and remove all spaces
$address = str_replace('(at)','@',$address);
$address = str_replace('(dot)','.',$address);
$address = str_replace(' ','',$address);

return $address;

STEP 2: modify the "sendsubmitnotification" function by adding in $ert=extractemailaddress($ert); as follows:

//Now check each of the email addresses that they are valid before creating/adding to the $emailresponseto array
foreach($emailresponsetos as $ert)

$ert=extractemailaddress($ert);
if(validate_email($ert))

$emailresponseto[]=$ert;

That's it. You could also add a tool somewhere on the webpage to help users encode email addresses. Here is a simple Javascript function I wrote to do the encoding:

// Convert characters in a string of text to hexadecimal string
function String2Hex(txtString)
var hex = '';
for(var i=0;i

Ideally there should be an email address field where we could specify both the name and the email address in two separate fields so that only the actual name would be displayed.

One quick fix to this problem is to modify the index.php file. Although this fix will not result in the email address being hidden, it will add the ability to specify both a name and email address in the same field, and to disguise or encode the email address itself.

By adding the following code, you get the following new functionality:

1) You can use "(at)", "(dot)" and insert spaces anywhere you want in the email address. For example:
ideas(at)lime survey(dot)org

2) You can specify an email address which is hex encoded. It's not a sophisticated encoding. For example, ideas@limesurvey.org would be 6964656173406c696d657375727665792e6f7267 (not case sensitive)

3) You can specify both a name and an email address by placing the email address between square brackets. For example: Great Ideas [ideas@limesurvey.org]

NOTE: You can use any combination of the above three options. Of course the hex version of the address is only useful if you combine it with #3 above. For example:

Great Ideas [6964656173406c696d657375727665792e6f7267]

So, here is how to implement this solution:

==== File to be modified: index.php ====

STEP 1: Add the following function right above the "sendsubmitnotification" function:

function extractemailaddress($address) // by Michael Milette (2010-10-27)

// eliminate everything outside of and including square brackets, if applicable
   $start = strpos($address,'[');
   if ($start > 0 && $start < strlen($address)) 
     $end   = strpos($address,']',$start+1);
     if ($start > 0 && $start+1 < $end-1)
        $address = substr($address,$start+1,$end-$start-1);

// Decode back to string if the email address is hex encoded
   if (ctype_xdigit($address))
      $address = preg_replace('#(\w)(\w)#e', "chr(hexdec('$1$2'))", $address);

// replace (at) with @, the (dot) with . and remove all spaces
   $address = str_replace('(at)','@',$address);  
   $address = str_replace('(dot)','.',$address); 
   $address = str_replace(' ','',$address);

return $address;

STEP 2: modify the "sendsubmitnotification" function by adding in  $ert=extractemailaddress($ert);   as follows:

//Now check each of the email addresses that they are valid before creating/adding to the $emailresponseto array
foreach($emailresponsetos as $ert)

$ert=extractemailaddress($ert);
   if(validate_email($ert))
   
      $emailresponseto[]=$ert;

That's it. You could also add a tool somewhere on the webpage to help users encode email addresses. Here is a simple Javascript function I wrote to do the encoding:

// Convert characters in a string of text to hexadecimal string
function String2Hex(txtString)
 var hex = '';
  for(var i=0;i<txtString.length;i++) 
    var h = txtString.charCodeAt(i).toString(16);
    while(h.length<2) h="0"+h;
    hex += h;
  
  return hex;

Please feel free to contact me if you have any questions.

Thanks again for all your time and effort.

With best regards,

Michael Milette
TNG Consulting Inc.
www.tngconsulting.ca

See the 1 comments or propose a solution >>

"lottery" for LimeSurvey

Written by vierundzwanzig the 4 Nov 11 at 09:58. Global category: Statistics. New

use case

The creator of a survey should be able to include a lottery into the survey. The participant will leave his/her e-mail address for participation in the lottery. In the admin tool it should be possible to see how many people have participated in the lottery and randomly select a number of e-mail addresses for the winners.

requirements

- If the participant takes part in the survey no conclusions about the participant should be possible. For example if the e-mail address is stored in the same survey database table or the sessionID and timestamp of the participation of the survey and lottery are stored in both of the two separate tables.
- The lottery should be part of a survey. It should not be a link to a new/additional survey (with navigation and "submit" button).
- The selection of winners should be done automatically by the LimeSurvey admin tool.

1
votes

equal

down

Solution #1: new question type "lottery-email"

Written by vierundzwanzig the 4 Nov 11 at 09:58.

A new question type "lottery email" is to be created. This type will be used as a free text field for entering the e-mail address. Writing to the database is done in a separate table like "lime_win_SID" without the SessionID or timestamp being stored in this table to ensure that no conclusions about the participants of the survey can be drawn.
In the area "responses & statistics"/"statistics" there should be a new textbox and a button to specify a number of winners. The winners are determined via random-number generator from the answers of the question with the type "lottery email". The winners are then shown on the page.

0
votes

equal

down

Solution #2: integrate a new single page survey

Written by vierundzwanzig the 4 Nov 11 at 09:59.

For the lottery and the actual survey two separate surveys will be created by the same creator. The question group with the e-mail address from the lottery survey will then be integrated in the actual survey with a new feature (a new drop-down box to display another survey of the creator. The question group should also be used in the selected survey). The e-mail address is stored in the database table of the lottery survey.
In the area "responses & statistics"/"statistics" there should be a new textbox and a button to specify a number of winners. The winners are determined via random-number generator from the answers of the question with the type "lottery email". The winners are then shown on the page.

Add a comment or propose a solution >>

P - Multiple Options with Comments

Written by pirna the 1 Jan 10 at 00:10. Related project: 1.x all. New

I want to modify type P - Multiple Options with Comments in order to select wich Options admit Comments.

i.e.
1 Newsletter
2 Documento de trabajo (¿Cuál?) ---> comment
3 Libro (¿Cuál?) ---> comment
4 Ninguno

No solutions.

Add a comment or propose a solution >>

Cross Survey Reporting

Written by ameghani the 29 Mar 11 at 01:12. Related project: 1.x all. New

Majority of the times people we use survey to generate statistics across multiple projects.
If I have the same questions asked to same people on different projects and present the data collected on multiple surveys collectively.
Can we have this feature in which we can have reporting on a global basis which is applicable to all the projects.

1
votes

equal

down

See the 1 comments or propose a solution >>

the complaint of filter stats sets

Written by darknico84 the 4 Nov 10 at 10:04. Related project: 1.x all. New

In some situation where you have to "replay" many times the same filters sets on various surveys (but with same question set) it can be very long and bothering to click each time on hundreds of filter sets.

0
votes

equal

down

Add a comment or propose a solution >>

Admin interface usability issues

Written by dabrahams the 25 Oct 10 at 03:56. Related project: 1.x all. New

Everything from the system where the admin "window" that prominently says "Question Groups" in it is actually the controls for the survey (etc.) to the multiple-click hoops I have to jump through to do trivial things, to the fact that once I set up a condition I can't even make trivial changes to the dependency questions without first deleting the condition in the dependent speaks for a total redesign.

I love the capabilities, just hate the admin UI.

1
votes

equal

down

Solution #1: outline-based UI with direct object manipulation

Written by dabrahams the 25 Oct 10 at 03:56.

The interface should show an entire questionnaire at once, with collapsible sections for question groups and super-questions. I should be able to select one or more sections and manipulate them directly, by dragging to reorder, copying, deleting, etc. Have a separate detail area of the window that updates to show detailed information about the selection and allow it to be updated.

The interface should not nanny me so much. It should make up question codes for me that I can override if I want, rather than forcing me to come up with a new code for each question. Error checking for nonsensical ordering, broken conditions, etc. should not prevent me from setting up intermediate conditions during editing that don't make sense, as long as I put everything back in order. In fact, it should all be changed to warnings IMO.

Add a comment or propose a solution >>

button replaces surveyurl in invitaiton e-mail

Written by freddekkers the 14 Dec 09 at 12:37. Related project: 1.x all. New

I would like to replace the surveyurl in the invitation e-mail ( and the reminder mail) by a button. Potential respondents are not interested in the numbers the see now.

3
votes

equal

down

Add a comment or propose a solution >>

Attributes for survey (in addtion to attributes for tokens)

Written by bkgray the 6 Nov 11 at 20:20. Global category: Tokens. New

I run many surveys that use closed access and multiple token attributes for each user. I recycle several of these surveys over the course of an academic year, or from year to year.

In these surveys, there are several places where some text should change for each run of the survey, but should be consistent within the run. For example, one survey is used to collect vacation travel plans from students. The name of the vacation changes every time I run the survey, but it appears in several places within the survey and in the invitation emails. Similarly, I specify dates (used for input validation) that are the same for all students but change for each vacation.

Currently, I manage this by using a token attribute to specify the text, and refer to that attribute throughout the survey and email text as appropriate. This works, but it requires that I add the text as an attribute to the token for each student, even though it's the same for each student.

I would like to suggest a feature that would create a set of attributes for the survey, in addition to the attributes for each token.

0
votes

equal

down

Add a comment or propose a solution >>

Change columns in dual scales (array)

Written by sociolog the 8 Sep 10 at 04:04. Related project: 1.x all. New

Some dual scales would look and feel better if the scales were not next to each other, but on the either side of the subquestion titles: Scale 1 - TITLE - Scale 2 (e.g. importance of item X - TITLE of item X - Satisfaction with item X, same for items Y, Z and T).

0
votes

equal

down

Add a comment or propose a solution >>

Question library

Written by holch the 15 Oct 09 at 04:29. Related project: 2.x all. New

Some questions you might want to use in different questionnaires. e.g. some standardized questions for socio-demographics, etc.

It should be easy to save questions in a kind of library, from where you can easily implement them to a new questionnaire.

No solutions.

Add a comment or propose a solution >>

auto generate IDs

Written by pmonstad the 5 Apr 11 at 12:20. Related project: 1.x all. New

I can't see why the user has to enter ID manually when creating question groups or questions. There should be an option letting LS auto generate IDs which the user can override if needed.

0
votes

equal

down

Add a comment or propose a solution >>

List-Unsubscribe rationale

Written by seancarlos the 20 Jun 11 at 07:48. Global category: Tokens. New

List-Unsubscribe is a mail message header used to provide machine readable unsubscribe instructions - an email address, a URL or both.

If List-Unsubscribe is present, some mail clients will offer a unsubscribe button and/or unsubscribe option if a user tries to flag the message as spam.

It is a recommended 'best practice' to improve message deliverability and do the right thing for the end user.

Documentation:
http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc2369.html
http://www.list-unsubscribe.com/

Gmail support: https://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=81126#unsub
http://techcrunch.com/2009/07/23/gmail-tries-to-make-it-easier-to-unsubscribe-f rom-spam-newsletters-but-fails/

Microsoft support:
http://download.microsoft.com/download/e/3/3/e3397e7c-17a6-497d-9693-78f80be272 fb/enhance_deliver.pdf
(although may be broken?):
http://blog.deliverability.com/2011/04/has-hotmail-discarded-the-list-unsubscri be-functionality.html

[....]

0
votes

equal

down

Solution #1: List-Unsubscribe Implementation

Written by seancarlos the 20 Jun 11 at 07:48.

Need to add unsubscribe email address and URL fields to UI + data structure. Consider validating for well formed email / urls. If one or both are present, add List-Unsubscribe header to email messages.

This probably needs to be done as part of global settings with the option to override it at the survey level, including suppressing global settings if present.

See the 1 comments or propose a solution >>

knowing presentation order of randomized questions can be important

Written by Tiepies the 9 May 11 at 14:45. Global category: Statistics. New

Randomization of questions is a great feature included in LimeSurvey 1.91. For people using LimeSurvey in psychological research, however, knowing the order in which randomized trials are presented can be important. In the analysis of psychological data, trial number is often included as an additional variable, to account for learning or fatigue effects.

1
votes

equal

down

Solution #1: store presentation order of randomized questions

Written by Tiepies the 9 May 11 at 14:45.

Although I don't know myself how to implement this, it does not seem that hard to me to store the presentation order with the survey results. A trial number variable can be added to the results, with a value for each question whenever the survey administrator chooses to randomize the order of the questions. Same goes for the randomization of answers within a question.

Add a comment or propose a solution >>

new forum catagory - best survey showcase

Written by veysur1002 the 26 Jan 10 at 00:18. Related project: 2.x all. New

There are few good survey examples to learn from.
There are few adequated test surveys available.

There are no real life surveys we can get access to learn from.

I suggest a new forum catagory - best survey showcase.

So that anyone in the community can submit a real life survey.

1
votes

equal

down

Add a comment or propose a solution >>

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 ... Next >>