Tracy van der Schyff

#Office365Challenge – Yesterday we created a survey in SharePoint. I said that planning should take up most of your time – what type of questions, order etc., but just as important as the actual questions – are the settings you’ll apply. Let’s take a look at the most common used settings – and why.

Related posts:
Around the Office in 365 Days: Day 26 – SharePoint Surveys

The settings of your survey can be accessed by clicking on the Settings dropdown (1), then on Survey Settings (2) (Surveys in SharePoint 2013 has not been upgraded yet to have the Ribbon menu at the top).

On the Settings page, you will see the following options:

I won’t be covering all the settings, but for now let’s look at the ones I work with every day:

List name, description and navigation:

Name and Description: Type a new name as you want it to appear in headings and links throughout the site. Type descriptive text that will help site visitors use this survey.
This is where I’ll rename my survey (after I created it with an acronym)

Display this survey on the Quick Launch? Specify whether a link to this survey appears in the Quick Launch. Note: it only appears if Quick Launch is used for navigation on your site.
Generally I don’t add my surveys to the Quick Launch (Left Navigation), as I’ll distribute the link via Announcement or email.

Survey Option: Specify whether users’ names will appear in survey results and whether users can respond to the same survey multiple times.
Show user names in survey results? Setting this to “No”, will display user names as Anonymous, Keep in mind that the user with full control permissions can set this back to “Yes” which will then display the names.
Allow multiple responses? This is important, not just for allowing users to respond more than once, but also to allow you to test your own survey a couple of times. After testing I normally set this back to “No” and delete my test results.

Advanced Settings:

Item-level Permissions – Specify which responses users can read and edit. Note: Users with the Cancel Checkout permission can read and edit all responses. Learn about managing permission settings.
I set my access to “Read responses that were created by the user” and “Create responses and edit responses that were created by the user”. Then users will only read and edit their own responses.

Search – Allow items from this survey to appear in search results? Specify whether this survey should be visible in search results. Users who do not have permission to see these items will not see them in search results, no matter what this setting is.
I normally set this to “No”. Even if everyone in the company has access to the survey, I don’t want the results to appear in my search results. See related blog – Around the Office in 365 Days: Day 15 – Exclude Items from Search Results In SharePoint

Permissions for this survey: This is where you’ll set the permissions for your survey.

Now you have the basics on settings for your survey, tomorrow we’ll have a look at setting branching logic on your questions.

Overview of my challenge: As an absolute lover of all things Microsoft, I’ve decided to undertake the challenge, of writing a blog every single day, for the next 365 days. Crazy, I know. And I’ll try my best, but if I cannot find something good to say about Office 365 and the Tools it includes for 365 days, I’m changing my profession. So let’s write this epic tale of “Around the Office in 365 Days”. My ode to Microsoft Office 365.

Keep in mind that these tips and tricks do not only apply to Office 365 – but to the overall Microsoft Office Suite as well as where applicable, SharePoint.