The Free Text Questionnaire is a great feature that gives you the ability to add a survey, quiz, or test to your app! With it you have the option to include a number of different question types such as Single Answer, Multiple Choice, and of course Free Text to your questionnaires. 

In this article we’ll go over some use cases of the feature, how to create a questionnaire, the different settings you can use, your users’ experience when taking your questionnaire, as well as some pro tips we think will help you when using this feature. 

Be it surveys, quizzes, or practice tests there’s plenty of ways you can use this feature! Some use cases of this feature include: 

The main function of the Free Text Questionnaire is to gather information from your users. Be it their favorite color, their opinion on something, or how well they’re doing in your class, the more information you can gather, the easier it is to keep your users engaged with your app! 

Now that you have some ideas on how to use the Free Text Questionnaire let’s go over how to create a questionnaire.

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What’s a questionnaire without questions? Not much! So let’s go over how to create your first questionnaire. But before we do that, we’ll take a look at the global options you have available to you. 

 Step 1: Give Your Questionnaire A Title

When you create a new instance of the Free Text Questionnaire you’ll see some options that you can set up before creating your first question:

The Test Title is where you specify what you’re going to call the questionnaire. The text that you enter here is what will appear on your questionnaire’s title screen. You can either give your questionnaire a simple title, or use this field to give your users a short description of what the questionnaire is for. 

 Step 2: (Optional) Set Up A Maximum Score For Your Questionnaire

Below the Test Title field you’ll see the “Maximum Score” field. Here you can specify the maximum amount of points that a user can obtain when taking your questionnaire:

As you begin to set up answers with point values assigned to them you’ll see the number next to the “Maximum score of” text automatically update to match your total maximum score. 

 Step 3: (Optional) Enable Question Shuffling

If you check the box next to “Shuffle Questions” the order of your questions will be shuffled for each user that takes your questionnaire:

Step 4: Add Your First Question

Once you’re done setting up these settings click the “Add Question” button to add your first question which will take you to the Question Editor.

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The Question Editor where you create new questions or edit existing ones. Let’s go over its different parts:

The Private Toggle

The Private Toggle is a feature that requires some advanced functionality that’s only available on our Enterprise level plan, so if you would like to learn more about this we encourage you to reach out to your Account Manager or reach out to us at: proservices@buildfire.com

Question Type

The Question Type section is where you select the type of question you’re going to ask. The four question types are:

Click on the drop-down menu to select the type of question you’d like to create:

Question Title

The Question Title relates to your question’s title in the App Dashboard. You can use this to help organize the questions in your questionnaire as their count grows.

Question Body

The Question Body is where you enter in the question that you want to ask. This can be the same as the Question Title if you’d like, it’s up to you. Keep in mind that the Question Title is for you in the App Dashboard, and the Question Body is for your users taking the questionnaire.

Answers

The Answers section is where you create the answers for your question:

To add an answer to your question click the “Add Answer” button which opens the Answer Editor:

Enter in the first answer that you want to offer as an option in the Answer Name field. You can assign a point value to it in the Answer Score field if you’d like. 

If you decide to click the checkbox under Free Text that will give your users the option to tap on that answer to enter in their own custom answer. Next to the Free Text box is a drop-down menu under that allows you to dictate what the next question will be for users that selects that answer. 

If you’ve set up multiple answers for your question you can choose to have them appear in a different order for each user by checking the box next to the Shuffle Answers option.

Note: You can add as many answers to a question as you’d like, but we recommend that you don’t overload your users with question options.

Answer Template

The Answer Template is an optional tool that you can use to integrate user’s answers with other features in your app like the Document Manager. If you would like to learn more about this and how to integrate it with other features within your app we encourage you to reach out to your Account Manager or reach out to us at: proservices@buildfire.com

Once you have completed setting up your first question and answers, click the Save Question button at the bottom of the question editor:

Note: You can always go back and edit a question and its answers later, just make sure you click the Save Question button after making any changes otherwise they won’t be saved.

As you create questions for your questionnaire you have additional options to adjust their order, edit them, and delete them with these buttons:

Next we’ll go over the advanced settings that you can use to tweak your questionnaire to your specific needs.
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To access the advanced settings for your questionnaire click on the “Settings” Tab in the App Dashboard:

The advanced settings in the Settings Tab give you additional control over your questionnaire and allows you to turn on and off various options for your users. When you click on the “Settings” tab you’ll see four options: General, Action Items, Notifications, and Language.

In the General section you’ll see the following options:

 Post To API

In order to use this you’ll need to be on our Enterprise level plan and have your own API integrated into our system. With this is enabled you can have our system send your questionnaire’s results to your API in the form of a JSON file. If you would like to learn more about this option we encourage you to reach out to your Account Manager or reach out to us at: proservices@buildfire.com

 Use Answer Templates

This option allows you to enable Answer Templates for your questions’ answers which we went over earlier on in this article.

Show Question Count In Header

Enabling this will display the total amount of questions in your questionnaire as well as how many of those questions users have answered so far.

Calculate Score

Enabling this displays user’s scores in the “Results” screen of the App Dashboard.

Pass/Fail

Enabling this allows you to set a minimum score required for users to pass your quiz or test.

Show Score

Enabling this lets your users see their final score after taking the questionnaire.

 Customize Colors

Enabling this allows you to set up custom colors used in your questionnaire. You have three options:

If you don’t enable this option the system will automatically pull colors from your Branding Page.

Allow Review

One enabled your users will be able to review all of their answers after submitting them. This is perfect for people who are using the questionnaire as a practice test or quiz for their users.

Show Retake Button

This option allows users to retake the questionnaire as many times as they want. 

Preselect Previous Answers

When enabled this option tells the system to remember the answers a user selected the last time they took your questionnaire.  

Allow Skip

This option allows users to skip questions in your questionnaire.

Allow Previous

Similar to the Allow Skip option, enabling this option gives users the ability to go back to previous questions within the questionnaire and change or review their answers.

Time Constraint

Enabling this option allows you to set a time limit for your questionnaire. The time limit will display for users while they take your questionnaire.

Test Date Range

This option allows you to set a start and end date for your questionnaire.

In the Action section you can assign Action Items to the questionnaire using the Action Builder which are triggered based on the user’s score:

If you would like to learn more about the Action Builder and the different Action Items that you can use, we encourage you to check out our dedicated article here.

 In the Notifications section you can set up notifications that are automatically sent out to users who decide to not complete or submit the questionnaire.

If you decide to create a notification the Notification Title is what will appear on user’s lock screen when they receive the notification and the Notification Text is what they see when they tap on the notification. You can set when a user will receive the notification after starting the questionnaire in the Send After drop down menu:

In the Language section you can change the language or phrases used within the Free Text Questionnaire feature:

Now that you know how to create a questionnaire, let’s go over how to view user’s submitted answers.

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In order to access user’s results make sure that you’re on the “Content” tab in the App Dashboard:

 Once there click on “Results”:

 Here you’ll see information such as which users have taken your questionnaire, when they took it, and their score (if you have the “Calculate Score” setting enabled in the Settings Tab) as well as a link to view their answers:

 Over time this list will get longer as more people take your questionnaire so we’ve provided you with the ability to filter results by date or user. You can filter results by checking the box next to “Filter by date” and entering in a start and end date or by entering in the user’s name or email in the search bar:

 If you would like to view a user’s answers click on “View” next to that user:

This will bring you to a page where you’ll be able to see information about that user and their submitted answers:

You can export user’s results in the form of a PDF (either image-only or with text) or as a .CSV file by scrolling down to the bottom of the results list and clicking one of these buttons:

Next, let’s go over your user’s experience when taking your questionnaire.

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Knowing your user’s experience of going through your questionnaire is extremely integral to making it the best questionnaire it can be. Thankfully the Free Text Questionnaire Feature is extremely easy to use! Here’s how a user goes through a questionnaire in your app:

Step 1: The User Taps On “Start”

When the user opens up your questionnaire they’ll see it’s Title Screen. Once the user is ready to take the questionnaire they will tap on “Start”.

Step 2: The User Goes Through Your Questions

As we mentioned before, there’s four question types. For a Single Answer question users will select one of the answers provided:

For a Multiple Answer question the user can select as many answers as they want:

If you gave users the Free Text option all they need to do to enter in their answer is to tap on the option that you enabled Free Text on:

 Then they simply type in their answer and tap “Done”:

For an Upload Image question they tap on “Take Picture” which opens the image library on their phone. They can upload one or more images as their answer:

For an Upload Image and Write Text question when they tap on “Take Picture” they’ll first be prompted to type in the text of their answer, then they’ll upload an image to go along with it by tapping on the camera icon:

 When they’re ready to move on to the next question they tap “Next”:

If you enabled the option to Skip or go back to Previous questions in the Settings Tab, those options to do so will appear at the bottom of their screen as well.

Step 3: The User Taps “Finish” To Submit Their Answers

Once is done going through your questions they’ll tap on “Finish” to submit their answers:

This sends their answers off to you and brings them to the End Tile of your questionnaire. Depending on which settings you enabled in the Settings Tab, users will be able to see their score, if they passed or failed, review their answers, retake the questionnaire, and more. 

Once they’re done with your questionnaire, they’ll tap “Done” and are sent back to the feature that your questionnaire is housed in. That is unless you set up an Action Item. If you set up an Action Item, then that action will be triggered if they meet the required score for that action.
 

As you can see the Free Text Questionnaire is an extremely powerful feature! Here are some pro tips we think will help you make the best questionnaires that you can!

Pro Tip 1: Take advantage of the Advanced Settings

There’s a lot of options in the Settings Tab, but they can be crucial in implementing an effective questionnaire. When you’re creating a questionnaire think about what you want to accomplish with it and which settings will work best in helping you achieve this. For example if you’re looking to create a score-based test then you should consider enabling settings such as Pass/Fail, Time Limit, Calculate Score, and Show Score.

Pro Tip 2: You can use this feature for more than just questionnaires

Thinking outside of the box is what makes our most popular apps stand out! We encourage you to think of creative ways to use the Free Text Questionnaire. For example: You can use the Upload Image and Write Text question to give people a way to submit insurance claims, and the Free Text option to give people a way to upload their information.

Pro Tip 3:  Keep your Questions fresh

Consider giving the questionnaires in your app constant rotation. This can take the form of monthly option surveys or new practice tests every week. This not only lets your users know that you actively keep your app’s content updated, but it also helps keep them engaged!

Pro Tip 4: Test your Questionnaires out on others

Not all questionnaires are created equal. We recommend that you have other people outside of your organization periodically go through your questionnaires and give you feedback on what can be improved. Outside feedback can provide some great insights!

In addition to this article, we recommend checking out the following related articles so that you have a better insight into how to best use our system:

Still have questions? No problem! Reach out to Support@BuildFire.com and we’d be happy to help!