Tutorial: Creating a Report: The basics

SurveyGizmo is a great tool for gathering data from your customers, clients and other contacts. But having that information won’t do you much good if you can’t quickly and easily summarize it. That’s where the Summary Report comes in.

Creating a report is a two-step process. First, you define the options and questions to include. Second, you run the report. Reports need to be rerun when new responses come in after your initial report creation.

Step 1: Navigate to the Reports tab

While editing a survey, click the Reports tab. Then, under Available Report Types (on the right side of the page), click Summary Report.

Step 2: Name the report

Now you’re ready to name your report. At the top of this page:

• Type the desired name in the Report Title box. Keep in mind that you can generate filtered reports based on respondent answers (we’ll cover how to do that in another tutorial), and you may want the report name to reflect a filter. For instance, if you want to generate a report of all the respondents from Colorado who took your survey, you might name it “Customer Satisfaction Survey – Colorado Customers.”
• OPTIONAL: Choose a date range of responses that will be included in the report. Enter the date in the form of m/d/yyyy in each date box. (Note: the dates are US-formatted.) If you leave this section blank, the report will include all the data the survey has collected up to the point you run the report.

Step 3: Choose which questions to include in the report

The Questions list is just below the title and date boxes. SurveyGizmo lets you choose which questions you want to include in a report. If you’d like to include all the questions in the report, do nothing. By default, all questions are checked.

But, if you want to exclude a question, simply click the checkbox to the left of a question to remove its checkmark. Questions you don’t include in the report will appear grayed out.

At this point, you may be wondering about the Responses and Graph Type column on the right. These icons indicate how data will be summarized for each question, and we’ve chosen the most effective way to display data summaries based on question type.

Pro and Enterprise accounts can change graph types, filter reports, and configure other question options.

Step 4: Configure what gets included in the report

You’re almost done; you have just a few more decisions to make.

• Create an Appendix of Essay responses by question
  Open-ended questions, such as text and essay questions, cannot be summarized or graphed. Plus, they can make reports very long. By default, SurveyGizmo leaves these questions out of a report. If you’d like to include open-ended questions in your report, you must check both the question in the list and the box called “Create an appendix of essay responses by question” under the Options section.
• Display Question Option Titles (rather than report values)
  It’s useful to have report values (a, b, c, etc.) for exporting and importing information, but when viewing a report, those values typically don’t make a lot of sense. If you want the question option titles to appear in the report, select this option.
• Create an Appendix of Contact Group information
  Another question type that’s difficult to summarize in a report is contact information (name, city, state, etc.). SurveyGizmo’s report tool gives you the option of creating an appendix of contact information. If you’d like to include contact info, you must check both the question in the list and the box called “Create an appendix of essay responses by question” under the Options section.
• Just show percentages in table question & ranking summaries
  When you include a table question or ranking summary question in your report, checking this option means the report will display percentages in the report but not the total number of responses given for each question option.

• Do not include ‘N/A’ answers in calculated percentages
  With this option selected, graphs that display percentages — such as pie charts — will not include respondent answers of “Not Applicable.”
• Round percentages to the nearest whole number
  Percentages are rounded up or down to the nearest whole number. (Eg: 14.6 % becomes 15 %, while 14.2 % becomes 14 %.)

• Include “Partial Responses”
  You need to decide whether to include partial responses (data from respondents who did not complete every page of a survey). Sometimes you’ll take what you can get and you would rather have as many answers as possible. If so, check this option.
• De-dupe responses by IP address (vote protection)
  Selecting this option means that the first survey response from a particular IP address is included in the report, but subsequent responses from that same IP address are left out of the report.

Step 5: Run the report

Ready? Okay, go for it. Click the Run Report button at the bottom of the page.

The report is now being built. Short reports run rather quickly, while lengthy reports may take several minutes. During this process, you will see the % Completed on the main reports page. You may work on another SurveyGizmo page while the report finishes.

Step 6: Working with your report

When the report is ready, click the View button. The report opens in a separate window/tab in your Web browser.

Congratulations – you’ve created a basic report, which has its own, random URL. You can share this URL with co-workers without being logged in to SurveyGizmo. But, of course, we don’t recommend you send it to anyone you don’t want to see the report. (If you do, you can always delete the report.)

IMPORTANT NOTE: A report captures any data collected up to the point when you run it. In other words, the report is a snapshot of data at a moment in time. It shows only responses collected up to the point it was last run. If you want to update the report to include new responses, simply click “Rerun.”