In this article
Survey Designer is the next generation of survey creation software from Forsta. The application enables you to create surveys at all levels of complexity, quickly and easily, using a modern and intuitive interface.
This documentation describes the Forsta Survey Designer functionality. The functionality is currently under development and is continually being improved and added to, and this documentation will be updated to keep pace with that development.
Bear in mind that while Survey Designer will eventually encompass all the Authoring functionality and will then supersede Authoring, until that time this documentation will only describe the functionality that is currently available in Survey Designer. You must log in to Forsta Plus to access the Survey Designer functionality, and you may also need to use the Professional Authoring application to perform some of the more complicated survey design work. To ensure you have full coverage of all the Professional Authoring and Survey Designer functionality, this documentation should be read in conjunction with the Forsta Professional Authoring User Guide.
For system and browser requirements, refer to the System Requirements.
Upgrade Schedule
Forsta Plus's SaaS platforms are typically upgraded four times a week (Monday through Thursday), enabling us to quickly deliver new capabilities on the platform. To ensure there are no potential compatibility issues for users who are logged in when an upgrade occurs, immediately the upgrade is deployed a check is performed to ensure any already logged-in browsers are running the latest Survey Designer version. If not, you will be prompted to reload your page. By doing this, any potential incompatibility issues for users who were working during the upgrade will be avoided.
Bear in mind that as the page must reload, any unsaved changes will be lost. However, changes are saved automatically as you make them, so losses will be minimal, if any.
Figure 1 - The Survey Designer Upgraded message
Homepage
The Forsta Plus Homepage is common to the majority of 's applications. When you first log in to this page opens, and it provides access to all the Forsta Plus applications that you are licensed to use. Click the appropriate icon to go to that application. Note that if you are not licensed to use an application, its icon will not be displayed in the page.
Figure 2 - Example of the Homepage
Note: Applications that do not yet have a Global Navigation icon have beside the application name. These will open in a new window, allowing this Homepage to remain open while you are working in the selected application.
Towards the right side of the Homepage is a list of projects you have recently been working on. This provides easy access to those projects - click on a project to open it.
Below the recently used list is a list of news items. These news items provide information on the latest changes, and other features and functionality that have recently become available.
Towards the bottom of the page is a list of the functionality currently accessible under "Limited availability". These items are still undergoing development, but are made available for testing purposes if your company has agreed to trial them. Please note that use of this new functionality for production work is at your own risk.
Saving Your Changes
Towards the center of the Survey Designer toolbar is the Saved icon .
Figure 3 - The Saved icon
When you make changes, a message appears at the icon informing you that the system has registered that changes have been made. By default, Survey Designer automatically saves all changes as you make them, however you can switch off the auto-save functionality if you wish - see below.
Auto-save On
When auto-save is switched on you do not need to save changes manually so the Save button (see below) is hidden. If you switch off auto-save then the Save button becomes available.
If you attempt to navigate away from the page before the save process is complete, a message will appear telling you that the changes are being saved, and the system will wait until the changes have been saved before moving to your next page.
If the system notices an error that means your changes cannot be saved, then a message is displayed asking you to correct the error and informing you that the changes have not been saved.
Disabling Auto Save
To disable the auto-save functionality, hover your mouse pointer over the Saved icon to open the overlay, then set the Auto-save toggle Off(grey). Toggle back to green to enable it. The setting is remembered for the current user on the current browser, so if you log in later using the same browser, the setting will be as you left it.
Figure 4 - The Auto-save toggle
If you disable auto-save, when you make changes to a survey a message is displayed to inform you that the system has registered that changes have been made, and a Save button appears next to it. Click Save to save your changes.
Figure 5 - The Save button
If you attempt to navigate away from the page while you have unsaved changes, a message will appear informing you of this. You can then save or reject the changes.
When making changes to multiple items in a survey (bulk editing) (go to Selecting Multiple Items in a Survey for more information), the same message is presented. This allows you to save changes as you wish, without having to access to the Save button.
Undoing Changes
If you wish to undo the changes you have just made, the Saved icon remains visible for a few seconds - click the blue "undo" button beside the message to undo the changes. You can also go to the Change log and use the Undo Change functionality available there (go to Change Log for more information).