LimeSurveyLimeSurvey®®

a quick & dirty overviewDennis Little Technology Management PartnersDennisLittle.com

Dennis LittleDennis Little

KeyCruncher.com – slides available9 years experience integrating open

source and COTS for SMB & Fortune 500my niche: Technology Translatortypically use RedHat/variants or UbuntuShameless plug: Dering Consulting Group,

Management Consulting & Surveys

LimeSurvey OverviewLimeSurvey Overview

Founded Feb. 2003 as PHPSurveyorRelease v1.80 todayv2 in active development

AJAX interface CakePHP framework Goals:

More modular GUI accessibility

LimeSurvey RequirementsLimeSurvey Requirements

v1.8~40MB disk spaceDatabase:

MySQL 4.1+ MS SQL 2000+ Postgres 7+

PHP 4.3.2+

Requirements continued…Requirements continued…

PHP modules / libraries: mbstring (localizations) mysql4 or mysql5 PHP library (standard) sessions support (standard) pcre (regular expressions support – standard)

Optional: iconv extension library on PHP4 (Excel compat) GD-library (captchas / charts) LDAP-library (tokens based on LDAP)

How I use LimeSurveyHow I use LimeSurvey

Client satisfaction surveysProspecting new clients / servicesManagement consulting:

Commonwealth of PA: DPW, DOT, Dept of Aging, Gov. Budget Office

Chambers of Commerce – member surveys Gannett Fleming Harrisburg Young Professionals

Shared LAMP VPS: FC8, 256RAM

Others using LimeSurveyOthers using LimeSurvey

2004 presidential election – Verified Voting Foundation

Austrian state governmentUbuntu – community surveyGNOME project – internal survey

ViabilityViability

SourceForge ranking of 106 today (activity)

Won 1st prize Business Mgmt category @ 2007 Trophees du Libre international

LimeSurvey FeaturesLimeSurvey Features

Unlimited surveys, questions, participantsMulti-lingual – 50 languages front/back20 question typesBranching / skip logicAssessment surveys / dynamic feedbackReusable answer / label setsAnonymous / tracked surveys

LimeSurvey Features…LimeSurvey Features…

WYSIWYG HTML edits (bold, italics, links)Saved survey, continue laterCookie or session based surveysTemplates for survey look & feelBack-office data entry support (paper)Expiration of surveysImport/export CSV, SPSS, ExcelUser management / one-time use tokens

LimeSurvey Features…LimeSurvey Features…

Quotas - only accept so many responsesFree, open source softwareGPL license v2 or later

Run for any purpose Modify for any reason Redistribute copies w/ source & mods Improve & re-release w/ source & mods

You own the data!

LimitationsLimitations

Branching does not support an “OR” of multiple questions, only “AND” between questions (v1.7.2)

Emails are text-only (helps with SPAM filtering) and can not include attachments

LimeSurvey Question TypesLimeSurvey Question Types

LimeSurvey web site

Anecdotal Best PracticesAnecdotal Best Practices

Notify participants of upcoming surveyConvey participant’s importance to

successCommunicate purpose of surveyAssure confidentialityNeutral party encourages candor

Anecdotal Best PracticesAnecdotal Best Practices

Answer: How long will this take?Remind prospects to participateConfirm receiptFollow-upClearly defined deadline to participate w/

fairly short windowDays of the week you send invites,

reminders matters

Demo Sample Survey?Demo Sample Survey?

Sample survey

DeploymentDeployment

Download tgzUnpackEdit config.phpchmod directories (templates, upload,

images)Run installer to create databaseDelete installer (forced)Login to admin console

config.phpconfig.php

Dennis LittleDennis Little

KeyCruncher.com - slides download

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