EFS Release Spring 2020

TIVIAN Access

New section: TIVIAN Access User Status

Once TIVIAN Access has been activated, the following status information regarding a user is listed in the newly created "TIVIAN Access User Status" area on the user details page:

• Active

• Inactive

• Not existing

The status Active will be assigned to the user if the identity provider knows the user and the user has already logged in. The status Inactive will be assigned to the user if the user is known to the identity provider but has not logged in yet. The status Not existing will be assigned to the user if the user is not known to the identity provider.

Password creation not required

After activating TIVIAN Access, a password creation is no longer required. The Password configuration (Portals) menu item of the People module will not be displayed.

Columns are no longer displayed

After activating TIVIAN Access, the following columns of the user overview table will no longer be displayed:

• Login - Expiry Date

• Can login?

• Actions

These columns can also not be reactivated via the View button.

Contact the administrator

In order to delete an admin user successfully, the admin user must be removed from the database of EFS and from the database of the identity provider. After the admin user has been successfully removed from the database of EFS, a message will be displayed informing about the successful deletion of the admin user as well as about the fact that an administrator must be contacted to remove the corresponding admin user from the database of the identity provider. The same applies to the deletion of a panelist.

Credentials have already been sent

After activating TIVIAN Access, the credentials of Portals have probably been sent to the panelist by the identity providers. If you want to invite panelists to your portal, a message is displayed that the identity provider has possibly sent the credentials already.

Portals

The Extension module supports Popup-dialogs

The Extension module now also supports Portals native modal dialogs. These can be used by applications to confirm actions, provide configuration options or any other cases, where a temporary second iframe is required.

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Additional verification of users

In scenarios, where additional logins are not desired, the application running in the extension module of Portals is able to verify the current user by validating the access token of a user with the EFS Service-Layer.

Guides Improvements

Process Control: Order Report

On the Process Control tab, you are able to specify the report ordering as a follow-up action in the event of a successful process. Up to now, the ordered reports have only been output in PDF format. As of this release, the PPTX file format will be used as a fallback if the report definition is not available as PDF file.

Restricted Access for Panel Groups

You can restrict Guides not only to a portal user role, but also to one of the available panel groups. To do this, use the new setting option (“Restrict guide usage to the following panel groups”) on the Settings tab. The guides you created will only be visible on the guides overview page to portal users who belong to the selected panel group. If you restrict the use of guides to a specific portal user role, guides can only be started by those who have been assigned the role, but they will still be displayed to all portal users.

New Guides View

You can now specify whether the guides available to a guide initiator are displayed in the list view or in the tile view. Open the Guides module configuration. The list view is activated by default. In the exterior view, portal users can also switch between the two modes, list or tile, via the buttons.

Guides Monitoring: Increased Visibility (US-Guide and ME-Guide)

The portal page module Guides-Monitoring has been enhanced. You now have breadcrumb navigation to better navigate through the various drill-down options. The clarity is also increased in this way. Three levels can be accessed:

• Tile view of the started guide

• Process overview

• Process details of the guide initiator

The process details provide you, the name, email address and profile icon of the guide initiator. A vertical timeline displays the guides started by the guide initiator. Each date on which this initiator started a guide is marked with a dot on the timeline. The following process details are displayed for the started guide:

• Start of the guide

• End of the guide

• Quota of the feedback rater groups

  • Self-assessment (ME Guide)

  • e.g. manager and team (ME Guide)

• Report downloaded (ME Guide)

Please note, that the ideation guide is not supported by Guides-Monitoring.

Guides Monitoring: The Export Function

You can export the table as an Excel file, which in turn enables the HR department to evaluate, prepare, and use the data. Simply click on the Export button to start the download. The export contains all guide initiators that have started a process.

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Guide Status Page: New Layout

The Layout of the Portals page module Guide Status has been redesigned. A timline shows you what to expect and when, and additional controls allow you to send reminders, invite additional people and extend the process.

Bulk invitation via Email-Address-List (ME and US Guide)

To make it easier to invite people, it is now possible to invite people to your guide by using a list of email addresses. Use the free text field. You have to activate the option "Allow invitations from email addresses". it is now possible to invite people to your guide from a list of email addresses.

Clicking on the link opens the free text field in which you can enter the e-mail addresses of the people to be invited, separated by semicolon, commas or line breaks.

After confirmation, all entries appear in a list. Afterwards, further persons can be invited via the search function.

EFS Platform Improvements

Full support for current Excel document format

EFS now fully supports the current XLSX document format in nearly all imports and exports of EFS. All “Export to Excel” functionality now generates XLSX documents instead of XLS.

Exporting of mail templates 

With EFS 20.1 it is now possible to export and import mail templates. This allows archiving or even migration of templates across different installations. The export includes all parts of the template, including translations and attachments. In some cases, the user may be prompted to adjust assignment to a portal, panel website or the mail sender.

Enhancements in custom question types

It is now possible to create groups and titles as items in multi-choice custom question types.

Adaptable Portals mail templates

Mail templates for Portals now provide the primary color (#portal_color#) and the URL to the logo (#portal_logo#) of  the selected portal. This allow us and our customers to provide reusable mail templates, which automatically conform to a portals brand automatically.

Formatting of wildcards with dates in mail templates

Any variable containing date/time information in mail templates can now be formatted using the piping function date_format, for example:

 #u_wave_expire_date|date_format(Y-m-d H:i)#

If a variable cannot be converted to a date, it will be printed without applying the format.

Survey improvements

Full support for right-to-left languages in Responsive Layout 3

The default survey layout now fully supports right-to-left languages and activates automatically, when a language from a supported region is used in the survey. All layout elements and questions, including sliders and other visual question types, are then automatically mirrored and adapted to the language, providing familiar usability for the participant. There’s also no need to manually flip scales or dimensions, allowing true multi-language surveys out of the box.

List of supported regions (first part of the language code)

ar (Arabic), arc (Aramaic), dv (Divehi), fa (Farsi), ha (Hausa), he(Hebrew), khw (Khowar), ks (Kashmiri), ku (Kurdish), ps (Pashto), ur (Urdu), yi (Yiddish). For example, ar_MA, ar_SA and ar_QA are all supported, because of region code ar.

Improved mobile view of the accordion matrix question type

The Accordion Matrix question type now has the option "Vertical alignment on mobile phones" in the detailed configuration, which allows vertical alignment of elements in the mobile view. This also happens if you have selected a horizontal layout.

Accessibility improvements in Responsive Layout 3

The accessibility of Survey Layout 3 has been further improved for users with disabilities. The questions now contain additional guidance information when filling out lists of answers and DAC checks will automatically read the error messages to the user. The HTML structure of accessible question types was updated to provide better compatibility with screen readers.

Temporary deactivation of active samples in Panel-Projects

It is now possible to temporarily deactivate an already invited sample, e.g. to correct the questionnaire. Deactivated samples are blocked from participation with a message and the survey is removed from the panelists’ todo list in Portals or Panel Website.

Reuse of stratifications across samples and projects

In panel and master data projects, it is now possible in a sample to reuse existing stratifications defined in other samples of the project or even samples of other projects, which were created with EFS 20.1 or later. This greatly speeds up creation of samples in panel projects with complex recurring stratification rules.

Easier editing of participant variables

It is now easier to create answer categories in the participant variables editor. It is now possible to create several categories at once, without the need to save each time. Also mass import of categories from a text editor, Excel or Word is now possible through the “Paste from Word” feature.

Batch updating of emails in the Participant administration

When updating participant data through an import file, it is now possible to also change the participant’s email address stored in the u_email variable.

Copying of plausibility checks

Plausibility checks can be copied to other pages. This allows reuse of existing checks, where the same or similar conditions are to be checked.

Usability improvements during designing of surveys

All variable pickers in the Questionnaire editor of a survey were enhanced to provide grouping of variables and titles containing the source of the variable, e.g. question names. This allows easier orientation while creating filter conditions in larger projects with similarly named answer options or scales.

Include files in LUA filters of a questionnaire

A LUA filter definition in a questionnaire can now re-use code libraries, by providing the possibility to include up to two libraries from the media library of an EFS installation.

Faster management of large projects

The new participant administration UI from EFS 19.5 release will automatically be enabled for personalised projects containing more than 1000 participants. This reduces the load on the system in large projects.

UID in Exports of personalised projects

The user's id (uid) is now included in participant data and combined participant and result data exports and can be used for easier mapping of participants to their data in external tools.

Hiding of source code editor in questionnaire editor

There is a new ACL right to hide the source code editor in questionnaire editor. By default, all teams with access to the questionnaire editor of a project also have the right show_source=write, which allows editing of the source code of a text.

Quota, which led to screen out is now stored

When working with quotas and analysing why a participant was screened out, sometimes it is useful to know, which quota led to a screen out. The id of that quota is now stored in the system variable quota_rejected_id.

UI improvement in selective export

When using selective export of data in survey (Project → Export → Result data → Selective export), we have improved the UI, which now groups variables of a question and allows quicker selection of all variables of a group  

Enhanced security in surveys

The handling of user provided information in URL parameters has been improved and HTML tags or other reserved characters, may be shown escaped in data exports, or in a survey if reused as a wildcard.

People Improvements

Bulk-Edit

Bulk-Edit of Panelists in the People module now allows modification of following variables: pstatus, doub_stat, reg_code, mail_validation_status, which makes management of pre-approved panelists easier. The panelists update through an import file now also allows duplicate status (doub_stat) of panelists to be updated.

Tracking of unsubscribed panelists

It is now possible to track global unsubscription status of a panelist with a master data variable. By going to System → Options → System setting, customers can select an existing yes/no master data variable from the drop-down in “Masterdata variable for mail blocklist”, which should track the unsubsciption status from now on. Existing panelists’ variables, who have already unsubscribed, are not automatically updated. For example, this variable can be then be used in grouping filters to exclude users from future survey invitations.

Time zones for mails in panel update rules

Update rules triggering emails, can now queue them for a specific time in the future, while observing the panelist’s time zone. Send mail, Add to sample and Send survey invitation mail have now the option “When to send”. This option allows the panel administrator to select an hour in panelist's time zone, when the email shall be sent. For panelists, whose time to send the mail has already passed, will have the mail queued for the next day during the selected hour. Default behaviour is to send the mail immediately at run time of the update rule.

Data Voyager

TIVIAN Access

TIVIAN Access can be used to access the Data Voyager. Once TIVIAN Access has been activated, the e-mail addresses of users cannot be changed, nor can passwords be created.

Layout Improvements

In addition to the layout improvements that have been made in this release, the current version number of the Data Voyager you are using is now displayed below the TIVIAN logo.

The new Dimension Tree based on EFS Categories

As of this release, you can choose between creating a dimension tree based on the survey structure and creating a dimension tree based on the EFS categories. The dimension tree based on EFS categories uses the following structure:

• Meta-dimension (guide name/project name)

• Dimension (category name)

• Items: Questions that are assigned to the category

A dimension is created for each category used in the survey

The US Guide Loader

The US-Guide Loader, available now, allows you to create US-Guides as DV projects to create reports and dashboards for US-Guide processes.

New Column: Data Source ID

In order to be able to trace, in which database the imported EFS project has been stored, the project management table has a new column that lists the Data Source ID of the EFS projects.