EndUserSharePoint.com: Customized views of a SharePoint Survey
Guest post from Paul Grenier, author of AutoSponge – A Non-developer’s Blog About Administering SharePoint
I have a love-hate relationship with MOSS 2007 surveys. I love the branching logic functionality and I like the built-in reporting. But I hate the lack of workflow support out-of-the-box and I detest the inability to create new views of the data from the user interface (UI).
In this article, I will try to mitigate the problems around survey views. I documented two techniques: one describes how to surface data using just the UI; the other shows you an easy way to add a view using SharePoint Designer (SPD).
- From your survey’s Overview.aspx page, click the View dropdown and select All Responses. If you cannot see the View dropdown, you may need administrative permissions for that list. You can also change the URL from overview.aspx to Allitems.aspx to see the All Responses view.
- Note that only four columns appear on this view and none of them displays any survey data.
- Click the Site Actions button and select Edit Page. Once again, if you cannot see this option, you may not have the proper permissions for this list.
- Click the edit menu on the survey’s list view web part and select Modify Shared Web Part.
- Click the Edit the current view link under the view dropdown selector.
- You can modify the view like any other list but I do not recommend changing the view name or filename. No matter what you do from the UI, you can only have one view other than Overview and Summary.
That was done using the OOTB functionality within SharePoint. If you want to create an additional view in the View dropdown list, you need to open SharePoint Designer.
- Navigate to your survey list
- Create a new folder by right-clicking and selecting New > Folder.
- Name the folder something you can remember, I called mine “Admin.”
- Right-click and copy the Allitems.aspx page in your survey list.
- Double-click the folder you created and paste the file there.
- From the UI, navigate back to your survey.
You will see two views listed as All Responses. Pick each one until you see the folder name you created in the URL. Repeat steps from the first section above to set your new view page the way you like. This time, change the name of the view so your View dropdown will display a different name.
Paul — i love it and feel your pain with Surveys. I just posted a bit on View creation on Surveys using a URL “hack”. linked from it back here: http://www.sharepointblogs.com/ggill1970/archive/2008/04/02/creating-custom-views-on-surveys.aspx
Geoff
ggill1970 posted a similar article today: http://www.sharepointblogs.com/ggill1970/archive/2008/04/02/creating-custom-views-on-surveys.aspx
Also, interesting Quick Surveys web part here http://darrenjohnstone.net/2008/02/17/sharepoint-quick-surveys/
Derek
Derek – Thanks for the resources. There are some really nice posts on Darren’s site.
Mark
Any idea how to display a Survey on the Portal Home Page? I tried Content Query Web Part but can only get links to results with titles of (Blank).
That’s fantastic – had been tearing my hair out over that – thank you!
the 1st method works, but I can’t edit the view again afterwards. I made a mistake and forgot a field I need to display :(
What gives? Any ideas?
Good job. Finally something that does not require designer
Don’t you also hate that alerts don’t function for new items when branching is on?
Has anyone resolved the issue of it not sending the alert for surveys with branching enabled?
Hi,
Is it possible to make a user read only for a survey, but still enable him to view the survey results.
Paul,
THANK YOU! I believe you have just saved me many hours of tedious manual work. This really works. From Microsoft’s abysmally inadequate documentation, we would never know that the data are simply in hidden columns. With this new view, I can link several surveys (in this case, managers’ project setup data and contractors’ monthly project performance reports) with an Access database and generate automated reports.
David at NIH
Guys, is there any idea for survey question random ordering?
Wonderful. You made my day and no hacking or SP designer required!!!!
can we add an attach file to a survey question ? . Like any other list toolbar on top we have the option to attach file . Is it possible to customize the survey as survey is also a list so we should have an option for attach file .
if it was possible for a user to attach a document to a
survey? I created a survey and don’t see an option where a user can attach a
file.
also–am wondering about being able to add attachments (i.e. photos) as a survey response–?? can get to the list where the photo is stored–but, it just diplays it as a hyperlinked number..
need to be able to see the photo–maybe a rich text box or something?
need to be able to have a print view that displays the photos– :)
is that asking too much?
Thank you so much for these instructions. Coming to grips with the complexities of SharePoint is not easy, so guidance such as yours is very useful.
Hi,
I have an issue, i have created 2 question in my survey. Q1 is rating of my website and Q2 is comment of the web site. I display summary view in my website and i would like exclude displaying Q2 graphical summary view.
Please advice and thanks.