How to Create a General Survey Project

A General Survey Project is not tied to courses and does not have the concepts of students, courses or instructors. General survey projects can be used for any type of online survey that you would like to administer to a group of users (students, instructors, administrators, staff, alumni, etc.).

General Surveys can be public or private. A Public General Survey does not have users but instead has a single link and/or QR code that can be used by anyone to take the survey. A Private General Survey has respondent users that you provide and only those users can take the survey one time. Each user has their own personal link in a Private General Survey so a QR code is not available for that survey type as a single QR code would not work for all users.

GENERAL SURVEY ACCESS OPTIONS

Public Link

The survey distribution page showing a checkbox to make the survey available on a public web page, a field for setting the number of allowed respondents, an email link section with a copyable survey URL, an HTML embed section with a copyable code snippet, and a QR code at the bottom with copy and download options.

Create a public link, distributed from your own e-mail: Course Evaluations & Surveys creates a link to the survey, which you can copy and paste into your own e-mail to send out to as many individuals as you like. Within this scenario, this link would be a public link, with no user authentication, so anyone who has access to that link can take the survey, and they can also take the survey as many times as they click on that link. NOTE: to avoid spam responses and webcrawlers, pubic surveys require the use of Invisible reCAPTCHA v3. This technology runs in the background to verify users without requiring them to complete a visual challenge (like clicking images) unless the system thinks they are a bot or webcrawler.
Create a public link to paste on a webpage: Course Evaluations & Surveys generates a public link that you could then paste on a webpage, online course or wherever online, and respondents would click on that link to access the survey. Again, within this scenario, this link would be a public link, with no user authentication, so anyone who has access to that link can take the survey, and they can also take the survey as many times as they click on that link.
Email or print a QR code for respondents to scan to access to the Public General Survey

NOTE

For a Public General Survey, if users would like to make subsequent or multiple submissions, their user session will need to be reset. To do so, the user can quit and re-launch their browser, clear browser cache and history, or use a different browser before accessing the public link again.

User-Authenticated Link

Generate an authenticated link sent out from the Course Evaluations & Surveys system (similar to e-mail communications within course evaluation projects): On the Communication tab of the project, you can create a Respondent email and include the Passwordless Login URL placeholder to send a personal link to each Respondent. When the Respondent receives an e-mail, they would click on that link to access the survey directly. With this option, the link within the e-mail from Course Evaluations & Surveys is user-specific and respondents would only be able to respond once to that survey.
Integrated approach where the survey becomes integrated into the user's Course Evaluations & Surveys Dashboard: When a student then accesses their Dashboard by logging into their Course Evaluations & Surveys account, a user-specific Login link within an e-mail communication through Course Evaluations & Surveys , or through integrated approaches through a link within your LMS to their Course Evaluations & Surveys Dashboard. This project would then be listed along with any other course evaluation or general survey projects that they are being asked to complete.

Create Project

Login to Course Evaluations & Surveys as a CES Administrator.
Click on Surveys & Projects from the top navigation tab, then click Projects
Click on +Create New Project.
Select General Survey Project, and click Begin.

Survey Submit Confirmation Box Text

Available for course evaluation and general survey projects, the Survey Submit Confirmation Box Text allows you to add customized text to the confirmation box that respondents see when they click Submit on the survey.

The Survey Submit Confirmation Box Text section showing an editable Message field containing a custom thank‑you message for respondents.

From the above example setup, below is the display of the Survey Submit Confirmation Box Text to the respondent:

The confirmation dialog showing the heading Confirm with the survey title Campus Parking Survey and a thank‑you message, with the buttons Cancel and Submit at the bottom.

Post-Survey Thank You Page

The Post-Survey Thank You Page can navigate respondents to other areas or web pages immediately after a survey is submitted, as opposed to driving them back to the Course Evaluations & Surveys Survey Dashboard. This feature allows you to add customized text or a link that displays immediately after survey submission. Enter and format text in the message area and insert a link to automatically display a customized page after respondents submit a survey. If this option is not selected the respondent will be directed to the Course Evaluations & Surveys Survey Dashboard upon submission.

The Post‑Survey Thank You Page section showing a checkbox to enable the thank‑you page, a text editor toolbar, and a message area containing a thank‑you note with a link directing users to the University portal.

From the above example setup, below is the display of the Survey Submit Confirmation Box Text to the respondent:

The EvaluationKIT page showing a message thanking the user for participating in the evaluation process with a link directing them to return to the University portal.

Public Link Steps

Enter a project Title.
Input Project Start and End Dates/Times: This determines when the general survey period will start and end within the project. If a user tries to access the survey after the survey has closed, they will receive this message:
Create a Public Link for this survey:
1. Select Make this survey available on a public web page; then, select the number of respondents you want to allow to take this survey.
  
  NOTE
  
  With this option, respondents are able to take the survey as many times as they click on the link. This number can be as big or small as you would like. Once the total number of responses received has been met, the survey will no longer be available.
2. Send the survey link via email system Copy and paste the text below into the body of your email message. Your email recipients can click the link and access your survey: This option allows you to copy the link and paste it into your own e-mail system to send out to as many respondents as you would like to participate in the survey.
3. Post the survey on a web site Copy and paste the code below into the HTML of any webpage so that others can click the link: This option allows you to copy the HTML code and paste that into a webpage.
4. Save.
NOTE

The public survey link will not work until a survey is selected and the project is deployed.
To add your main survey click Select a Survey button, find the desired survey, and click on the Select check mark, and then Save Survey. Note: Only surveys that have been created as a General Survey type can be chosen as the survey in a general project.
Within Report Setup, you can choose to allow access to the results of this general survey project to administrators enrolled in various areas within your account hierarchy. Select the access levels within the hierarchy, as well as set the report access start and end dates for results to be available to those administrators with access to the selected areas within your hierarchy.
Deploy the project.

Authenticated Link Steps

Enter a project Title.
Input Project Start and End Dates/Times: This determines when the general survey period will start and end within the project. If a user tries to access the survey after the survey has closed, they will receive this message:
Save (do not select the public link option).
Select a Main Survey and click on Save.
Users

NOTE

This option is not available if you select the Public Link option within Project Properties. The survey can either be public or private, not both. If it is public, you will not see the Users section.
1. You can create a user manually by clicking +Create New User.
2. To insert a group of email addresses, click on Data Import and select Email Addresses. Here, you can copy and paste e-mails addresses in the text box and click on Save. This would create users automatically for each e-mail address that you paste into this area. E-mail addresses must be separated by a comma or have one e-mail address per a line.
3. Upload a User File: To upload a user file, click on Data Import and select Excel. The user file for a general survey project has four required fields: Username, Email, Firstname, and Lastname, while Password is an optional field. When using this type of upload, the general survey project will be tied to the username within Course Evaluations & Surveys . A user will be able to view this project on their Course Evaluations & Surveys Dashboard, along with any additional active surveys they need to complete. If users within this user upload file are coming over to Course Evaluations & Surveys from your LMS or portal, they will see this survey available to take on their Dashboard, provided the username is in alignment. Again, this is all tied back to the username.
Communication: When you tie the survey to specific users within the general survey project, you will also see the Communication tab available within your project. Here, you can setup your e-mail communications within this general survey project. You can create the following e-mail communications:
1. E-mail to all Respondents (this could be the initial Survey Invitation).
2. Non-Respondent Notification.
3. Administrator Results Notification.
4. Anytime Email.
5. Include the user-specific Login link, as well as the Survey Start and End Dates, or the Project Name.
Within Report Setup, you can choose to allow access to the results of this general survey project to administrators enrolled in various areas within your account hierarchy. Select the access levels within the hierarchy, as well as set the report access dates for results to be available to those administrators with access to the selected areas within your hierarchy.
NOTE: Administrators who are given access to the results for the General Survey Project will be able to generate Detailed Reports, Detailed Report + Comments, and Raw Data report. Disabling specific report types under Results Settings will not affect the reports that are available in General Survey Projects.
Deploy the project.
1. Once a project has been deployed, you are able to return and change start/end survey dates, project properties, user and course information, communications and report setup. However, once a project has been deployed, you are not able to change the selected survey.
2. As a CES Administrator, you can also temporarily suspend a project, should there be any critical changes you need to make.
  
  NOTE
  
  Suspending a project will disable survey taking, survey notifications within your LMS, and any unsent project communications will not go out to users.
3. Once you unsuspend a project, survey taking will resume and survey notifications in your LMS will display. You'll also have the option to send/not send the emails that were suspended during this time.
4. If a project is ever suspended, the Suspend History link will display the history and the Projects page of Course Evaluations & Surveys will allow you to search for any projects with a suspended status.