How to make adjustments to my survey, without re-uploading the survey?

Here are some facts about OfflineSurveys

  • A survey on OfflineSurveys can exist forever, even if the original survey on LimeSurvey was removed, or deactivated or expired, as long as the survey was not refreshed on OfflineSurveys (using “refresh survey” option)
  • When you refresh a survey on OfflineSurveys there are the potential outcome
    1. The survey on LimeSurvey is inactive/deleted/expired/unreachable: you get a caching error on OfflineSurveys and can’t use this survey anymore
    2. No changes to the original LimeSurvey survey: nothing happens
    3. you added/removed a question/subquesion to the original LimeSurvey survey: OfflineSurveys will acknowledge the change and will ask for permission to delete the existing responses so it can construct a new responses table that is fit for the changes
    4. minor design/text/color changes: will be reflected on OfflineSurveys without the need to delete/reconstruct responses table

Our Recommendation for changing the survey is:

  1. Instruct your surveyors not to press “refresh survey” option for the following xx days (the time you need to make necessary changes)
  2. deactivate your survey on Limesurvey and do all the necessary changes you would like
  3. have your new survey tested on a new device, make sure that it works well on OfflineSurveys
  4. Instruct your surveyors to first export/email all the data that’s there on the local device, then press “refresh survey” option, the changes should reflect on OfflineSurveys