An offline survey tool is perfect when conducting a survey at an event. It offers the convenience of an online survey, but it works when your internet connection is unstable or even if there's no WIFI connection at all. You can use it for data collection, brand awareness surveys, or just to share engaging content.
Professional Enterprise ReportR DistributR This guide will teach you:
- Offline questionnaire requirements
- Create your questionnaire
- Add the questionnaire to your device
- Upload your questionnaire
- Turn off your internet connection
- Let respondents take your questionnaire
- Upload your responses
1. Offline questionnaire requirements
Make sure your questionnaire will actually work without an internet connection. You'll need to check your device's functionality and make sure the questions in your questionnaire are suitable to be used offline.
1.2 Questionnaire requirements
1.1 Device requirements
Supported devices:
- Android 4.4 and higher
- iOS 10 and higher
Supported browsers:
- Internet Explorer
- Chrome (latest and before latest version)
- Safari (latest and before latest version)
1.2 Questionnaire requirements
Check the following items so the questionnaire will be able to go offline:
- Audio, video, and images can be used without internet connection in questionnaires and quizzes, but the use is limited. For some devices, the files need to be under 5 MB altogether in order that the questionnaire can be uploaded in the cache of the device. This max of 5MB depends on the device and will be higher on more modern devices. Be sure to test this before going live. Keep in mind that the more files you upload, the more time it'll take to upload the questionnaire onto the device the first time.
- Streamed media such as YouTube videos or images hosted on external websites will not be cached and will not work in offline mode.
- If you set a limit to the number of appearances of a prize, the Scratch Card can't be used without internet. If you delete this number, you will be able to use the Scratch card without Internet.
- Image upload won't work without internet.
- This feature won't work in incognito mode.
- Features for which you need to connect to a server won't work without internet: YouTube movies, Final Button with custom URL, Activation Code, Leaderboard, Unique Respondent, Save per question, View correct answer: get percentages, Google Analytics, Social Media features, and Question Pool.
- The MailChimp integration, email notification, and email templates will get to work as soon as the responses are being uploaded.
Make sure to test your questionnaire before the event!
The responses collected offline are synced automatically as soon as the questionnaire is opened on the device with an internet connection.
2. Create your questionnaire
First you have to Create your questionnaire.
Click Start from scratch so you can build your own questionnaire making sure that all questions are suitable to be used in offline mode.
Check out these detailed guides to help you create your questionnaire or quiz. When your questionnaire is ready, save it and click on the Extra Options tab. Scroll down to the Kiosk mode options and click Offline.
Scroll to the bottom of the text and toggle to enable offline mode. Now a box will come up to ask you to confirm that you will be using a supported browser. Once you've read the information and can comply, click yes, please.
Now you'll see the option to also enable a counter if you are on the Enterprise plan. Click Save changes and you are ready.
The counter is useful to show you how many responses have been saved on your device, so you'll know when it's getting too many and you should upload the completed questionnaires.
Do not edit a questionnaire while you're collecting data with it in offline mode. There is a major risk that you would lose data if you do so.
If you want to edit your questionnaire:
- Make a copy of it and edit the copy.
- Upload all data from the initial questionnaire in online mode. (Don't make any changes to this questionnaire, leave it as it is!)
- Install the copy on your device in offline mode and start collecting data again.
3. Add the questionnaire to your device
Now that you've enabled your questionnaire to work without internet, it's time to add it to your device. Enter the link of your questionnaire in your browser to open the survey or quiz. Don't use Incognito mode to open the questionnaire. Add the icon of the web page of your questionnaire to the home screen.
If you work on a desktop or laptop, just open the browser and enter the link.
4. Upload your questionnaire
After having added the icon to the home screen, start the questionnaire (by tapping on the newly created icon on the home screen) while the device is online. Run through the entire questionnaire to upload all elements. If you have multiple languages, make sure you run through all of them.
For a desktop or a laptop, you run through the questionnaire/quiz.
5. Turn off your internet connection
You can do this easily by turning on Airplane Mode. Open the survey or quiz by clicking on the icon you've added to your home screen. Turn off the internet connection on your laptop or desktop.
It is possible that the first time you launch the app without internet, the system will show the message ‘Turn Off Airplane Mode or Use Wi-Fi to Access Data’. Just answer ‘OK’ and continue.
For this feature, it is advised to always launch the mobile app from the home screen button (i.e. not use it with no internet inside the browser).
It is advised to turn on Airplane Mode to work completely without internet. This is a better option than leaving the Wi-Fi/3G/4G on and taking the risk that the device has a poor-quality connection. In the latter cases, there is a potential risk for bad performance and/or loss of data collected in offline mode.
6. Let respondents take your questionnaire
Run the questionnaire or quiz in exactly the same way as you would in online mode. It's best to upload the responses after collecting a certain number of responses, depending on the device, in order to keep your responses safe. If the cache of the device is full it won't store any responses anymore. (To give you an estimation: Tablets can easily store 500 responses.)
7. Upload your responses
If you have finished collecting responses and you are in a location with a (stable) network, turn off the airplane mode and connect the device to the internet. Close the questionnaire (if not already done), and reload the app. If your questionnaire has multiple languages make sure to open a language in order to upload all responses.
The system will ask whether it should send the responses to the server and after confirming, it will automatically send the responses collected so far to the server and will show a message ‘x response records sent to server’. You should be able to see the responses under Results on your PC.
If you change something to your questionnaire or quiz (e.g. you make a change to a question), it will take a few seconds for the change to be effective when (re)starting the questionnaire on a device. You will see a message ‘Downloading offline resources’ for a number of seconds. This behavior is only for questionnaires that you can use without internet.
What's next?
- Randomize questions means that all of your questions will be shuffled in a random order every time someone opens the questionnaire. This can be useful for a quiz when you don't want respondents to look at each others' answers, as everyone will have their questions in a different order.
- Question logic is a highly effective way to improve the flow of your survey and tailor it to make it relevant to respondents. It allows you to specify which question to show or hide, or even skip to the end of the survey, based on the answer to a preceding inquiry, quiz score, or contact data.
- Invite your respondents for your voting sessionby sending them an email or a text message or ask them to enter the link when you present it on a presentation screen. Let the respondents enter their votes. Present the results on the presentation screen in real-time and use our application in presentation mode to include your logo.