Checkbox Survey Online 4.7 Scheduled for Release 7/27/10

Checkbox Survey Solutions is pleased to announce the release of Checkbox Survey Version 4.7 tomorrow, July 27^th, 2010. Checkbox 4.7 will include several new features, including the addition of mean, median and mode for ratings scales and enhanced pie chart options. Version 4.7 will also include many performance enhancements and bug fixes, including report memory enhancements, the addition of a dedicated email queue and a matrix border bug fix. Complete release notes can be found at the bottom of this message.

What Checkbox Online Customers can Expect:  Unless you have previously arranged with us for a deferral of your upgrade to 4.7, all Checkbox Online customers will be patched from Checkbox V4.6 to Checkbox V4.7 at approximately 7pm EST on July 27, 2010. The upgrade should be complete in under an hour, will be done entirely by the Checkbox development team and does not require any intervention from you.

While we do not anticipate any downtime, there is a slight possibility that if you are in the middle of editing or taking a survey you may be logged out of the application and need to log back in to resume your work. If you plan to have critical survey work going on tomorrow between 7pm and 8pm EST, please let us know and we can defer your upgrade for up to a week to avoid any chance of a brief interruption.

We will post a message on your Checkbox customer support page when the upgrade is complete.

What Checkbox Server Customers can Expect: Version 4.7 will be available to Checkbox Server customers approximately 1-2 weeks after the Online release. The download will be available on your Checkbox customer support page and we will notify you with a separate email and customer support bulletin at that time.

Full Checkbox 4.7 Feature and Enhancement List:

New Features

• New reporting item to show mean, median, and mode for 1 or more rating scale questions.
• Ability to make responses anonymous. No user data is recorded when this option is selected, whether the user is anonymous, a Checkbox user, or a network user.
• Choose whether pie chart labels should be displayed inside the pie slices, outside the pie slices, or only in the chart legend.
• Choose whether to show result percentages in pie chart labels or only in the chart legend.
• Choose from alphabetical, answer count, or survey option order for bars in column and bar charts.
• Specify custom validation regular expressions for single line text items.
• Ability to record the email address of a respondent to whom an email invitation is sent.
• Change in the .csv export format. When ‘Detailed Response Info’ is selected, export now includes ResponseGuid and invitee email address (from above bullet).

Performance Enhancements

• Integration with external caching component for reduced memory use in web farms.
• Several enhancements to reporting to improve performance and reduce view state size  and memory use, especially for reports with large numbers of items or filters.
• Use of AJAX for better reliability for long-running tasks such as exporting large result sets, or sending invitations.
• Optional dedicated email queue and sending service improves reliability and recovery when sending large numbers of invitations.
• Optionally store files uploaded to surveys in Amazon S3 buckets instead of the Checkbox database.

Other Changes and Bug Fixes

• Fixed issue where native SPSS export did not work on 64-bit servers.
• Added logic to ensure surveys marked “Invitation Only” do not appear in survey list on AvailableSurveys.aspx.
• Duplicate user names in user import are now handled more gracefully and no longer cause entire import file to be considered invalid.
• Fixed issue where object returned by CreateInvitation web service call only contained some invitation data.
• Fixed issue that prevented matrix borders from being displayed.
• Added logic to prevent occasional errors when survey progress bar is enabled and respondent views first survey page.
• Fixed issue where answers to drop down list questions inside a matrix were not recorded in some situations.
• Prevented error from occurring when a user in the Form Editor role, but not the Form Administrator role, created a new survey.
• Fixed rendering issue that occurred when a matrix column contained a single radio button or checkbox.
• Respondent IP address is now only logged when LogIpAddres database application setting is enabled.
• Zero score value of “(0)” no longer shown in response details for surveys where scoring is not enabled.
• Improved performance of GetSurveyInfo* web service calls by excluding item configuration details by default.
• Application now redirects properly to configuration error page when application url is not set in the web.config.
• Fixed issue where characters such as the apostrophe where double-encoded when stored in the database.
• Resolved upgrade errors that could occur when Ultimate Survey database contained referential errors for report pages.
• Removed “Other” option configuration options for report charts that only contain rating scales, and therefore have no “Other” options.
• Fixed case-sensitivity of search when adding entries to ACLs.
• Fixed issue where user would be asked to login in a certain edge case for invitations with auto-login enabled.
• Changed alignment of “Other” text input for matrix questions to be left aligned instead of center aligned.
• Fixed issue where it was not possible to search for groups by name when adding entries to ACLs.
• Added logic to prevent appearance code for custom report items from being changed when chart styles are applied to a report.
• Added example of creating invitation to web service starter kit project.
• Added response database identifier to names of files uploaded to surveys, which allows for easier matching of uploaded files to exported survey responses.
• Added print-only style to improve appearance of text inputs when a survey is printed.
• Added configuration file reference paths to WYSIWYG editor for style header/footer to allow for end user configuration changes.
• For new installations, response answers saved by default when respondent clicks “back” button.
• Additional error details logged when relational errors occur when loading or saving data.
• Added logic to more accurately calculate page and item numbers for surveys with branching rules and conditions.
• Fix issue where pipes could only be added to questions when the WYSIWYG editor is used.
• Removed “Flash”  option from WYSIWYG editor since it did not function properly.
• Ensure “NetworkUser” column only included in exports when “LogNetworkUser” database application setting is enabled.
• Removed nonfunctional “Deactivate Item” link from report editor.
• Fixed issue where date picker  control didn’t allow selection of pre-1981 date.
• Fixed issue where matrix header rows where not shown properly in matrix summary report items.
• Add data encoding to mitigate risk of XSS attack when displaying error messages when query string data could not be converted to the expected datatype.