SharePoint as Survey Software
Posted by Justin Corrado on Thu, Nov 19, 2009
We often have prospects looking to migrate to a survey software application from a home-grown system. Recently, we've been seeing more organizations looking to move from Microsoft SharePoint, an enterprise content management platform.
What clients liked about SharePoint when it comes to building online surveys:
- The WYSIWYG form editor makes it easy to build basic surveys.
- It offers complete flexibility for programmers to use HTML, JavaScript, AJAX techniques, Flash and other standard web development approaches.
- It stores data directly in the repository that the administrator selects.
- Survey results are readily exported as CSV (Comma-Separated Value) or XLS files.
Here are the features that caused SharePoint users to move to a dedicated feedback platform:
- It is difficult for business users to create surveys of moderate or significant complexity with SharePoint.
- The lack of integrated email support meant that invitations, reminders and thank-you emails had to be created outside the system.
- The lack of panel management meant administrators couldn't target respondents and track past survey activity.
- It is difficult to personalize surveys based on known data.
- SharePoint lacks survey-specific web services, making integration more tedious.
- Some users reported security concerns.
- Until recently, there was no support for basic skip patterns (available with MOSS 2007) or advanced branching.
- It has no real-time reports or dashboards and can't export results to SAV or PPT files.
SharePoint is a great interim solution for organizations first adopting web surveys. It excels at short, uncomplicated and static surveys, but organizations outgrow it when they need advanced questionnaires, intermediate MR functionality, integrated email invitations, panel management or enterprise feedback management.
Experience Vovici Request a Call from a Vovici Rep Request a Demo with a Vovici Rep