Our platform offers the ability to generate and download printable versions of ideation or survey forms, making it easy to share and distribute physical copies of your forms. When you've collected responses on paper, you can also scan and upload these forms into our system for easy organization and analysis.
In this support article we will explain how to generate printable forms, how to scan and upload these forms when they are filled in and how you can review and adjust the responses to correct any potential mistakes or remove responses entirely.
Access to this feature depends on your plan.
Generating Printable Forms
Step 1 - create a phase/project
To be able to generate a printable form you first need to create a survey or ideation phase.
To create an in-platform survey or ideation phase, you can start by creating a project.
Under the “What do you want to do?” section - you can choose the engagement methods you would like to use for a phase in the project, and here you will choose; "Create an in-platform survey" or "Collect input and feedback in public".
Once you have created a phase in your project with an in-platform survey or ideation as method you can create your survey or ideation/input form in the survey or form builders after clicking on 'Edit survey' or 'Edit Input form'.
You can read all about creating and editing an in-platform survey in this support article.
Step 2 - Download a PDF or Excel file
After creating a survey, you have the option to download it in two different formats: PDF or Excel. This can be done in either the survey builder or in the "Survey" tab in the back-end of your project.
To download the survey as a PDF, simply navigate to the survey builder and click on the "Download as PDF" option. This will generate a PDF version of your survey that you can save or print for your records.
Alternatively, if you are in the back-end of your project, you can click on the three dots next to the survey and select the "Download survey as PDF" option from the drop-down menu.
In addition to downloading a PDF version of your survey, you also have the option to export an Excel template. This can be done by clicking on the three dots next to the survey and selecting the "Download an excel template" option from the drop-down menu.
Make sure to not alter the downloaded PDF in any form after downloading: it might lead to errors in the upload.
Uploading Forms
When you are done collecting offline responses you can start with uploading them onto the platform. By leveraging OCR technology we allow you to scan and upload paper responses that are hand written at scale. If you collected offline responses with for instance a tablet in the excel sheet template you can also upload them very easily.
Here's how:
In the back-office of your project, you can click on the three dots next to the survey and select "Add offline inputs".
A new page will open: the Input Importer. The importer will be empty because you need to import your responses first. To do this click on "Import" in the top right corner. Please, note you can only upload inputs or survey responses in one language at the time.
Click on "Click to select a file" to upload the PDF file of scanned forms or a completed Excel file. If you have multiple languages on your platform, select the right language.
To avoid errors during upload we recommend you:
Use a professional scanner or scanning app, not your phone camera app.
You ensure all pages in the scan are the same size
Do not upload over a 100 pages
Do not include the responses in the scan upload where the respondent has deviated from the question format: e.g. a respondent who has added a hand written response next to a multiple choice question
Limitation of import of Mapping and Matrix questions
Be aware that while all survey questions types can be downloaded as PDF not all survey question types can be imported back using our scanning technology.
mapping questions
file upload questions
matrix questions
These 3 question types are not yet supported for import.
Approve imported inputs
After importing a file you'll see the responses on the left of the screen. When you select one of the inputs the content will be shown in the middle of the screen. You can scan the answers and change the email and check or uncheck 'User consent'. If everything is correct click on "Approve". The input will disappear from the Input importer and you can move on to the next response.
When importing a PDF file with scanned forms, the scanned form will be visible on the right so you can check if the OCR technology recognized the writing correctly.
With these simple steps, you can easily generate and upload printable versions of your forms, making it easier to share and analyze your ideas and responses.
Ideas imported and approved will have an ‘imported’ tag
FAQ
Can I add demographic questions to my offline participation?
At the moment, it's not possible to upload demographic data directly into the platform, as it must be linked to a user profile. However, if you’d like to collect demographic information as part of your offline participation, you can include these questions directly in your survey (instead of using registration questions). This way, you can add the responses during your upload and still achieve the desired insights.
Need more help or support? Contact our Support Team via the chat bubble. 💬