Previewing Your Work

Let’s take a look at the questions you just created.

Steps:

  1. Click the Save button to save the survey first, as Illume does not auto-save as you go along:
    previewing 1
  1. Click the Preview Survey button to look at the survey:
    previewing 2
    The Survey Preview window appears, displaying an HTML version of the survey.  The preview works just like the real survey – all the logic, styles, and validations will be in the preview version.Note that it may take a few seconds for the preview to appear the first time you use it. This is normal. Subsequent previews will appear more quickly.
  1. Click the Start button to begin the preview:
    previewing 3previewing 4

Remember that we added some requirements to this question.

  • The question is required to be answered
  • The answer must be a whole number within a defined range

Testing your Question

  • Try clicking Submit Results without answering the question. You’ll see the error message that you typed in earlier.
  • Type some nonsense into the text box, and try again to submit.
  • Try again with an invalid number, like -4 or 800.
  • Try again with a valid number– any whole number between 1 and 100. This time, when you click Submit Results, Illume will accept your answer and display a generic end page message. Or it will just allow you to continue on with the survey if you have more questions in your survey.

Additional Information about the Preview

The login page, the thank you page, and all of the images are part of Illume’s default template. All of these items can be customized for each survey created. Illume surveys can contain images, Flash animations, Java applets, or any other media type that current browsers support.

Note also that there is a Reload button at the bottom of the Previewer. Click this any time to go back to the first page of the survey or when you have made edits to the survey and would like to see the changes.

The employment question no longer appears on the same page as the other two questions. Illume automatically moves this question to a new page because Illume has to know how participants answer the AGE question before it knows whether or not it should even present the EMPLOYMENT question. You’ll notice now that if you enter a number less than 18 or more than 70 in response to the age question, you won’t see the employment question.

Viewing in Default Browser

You can also view your survey in your default browser by going to the Preview menu and selecting In Default Browser.

Additional Information about Show-if Logic

  • Multiple Show-if conditions can be applied to each question in a survey.
  • Show-if conditions can be applied to entire collections of questions.
  • Questions and/or collections that include Show-if conditions are marked with a yellow circle in the Survey Designer, like ‘EMPLOYED’ and ‘C1’ are in the image below.
  • Questions and/or collections that are set to be “Never shown” are marked with a red circle in the Survey Designer, like the ‘C2’ collection in the image below.  For those items, the column is retained in the database, but the question will not appear on the screen.
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