AskPeople is a flexible, self-hosted web tool for managing simple web-based surveys & feedback forms.

It's different from the paid-for, hosted services like SurveyMonkey or Zoomerang, as there are no monthly or per-response fees - you just download and install AskPeople on your own web server running PHP. The 5-minute installation process will have you up and running quickly, and from then on you then have complete control over your data. You (or your web team) can weave AskPeople into your own website or intranet seamlessly to ensure your surveys give a polished, professional impression to customers or coworkers.

AskPeople isn't a full, professional market research tool with PowerPoint charts, online panel management or complex logic. It's a straightforward but surprisingly powerful tool for those projects when it would just be great to ask a few straightforward questions of a group of people, and get the responses back in a clean and consistent format.

Screenshots from AskPeople

How is AskPeople different from all the other online survey tools?

  • 'Less is more' control panel: keeps questionnaire design and data download quick, simple and straightforward
  • Easy self-hosting: you download and customise the tool, and install it on your own web server with no database needed
  • Simple, flexible data export and reporting: get responses by email, browse topline or individual reports, or download as a spreadsheet
  • Robust, standards-compliant templates and forms which offer a good level of accessibility and cross-browser compatibility
  • Donationware: we trust you to pay for the value you get from the tool, based on what you think it's worth

Key features

  • Six question types you can mix and match in your questionnaires: single option, single grid, multi option, multi grid, small text box and large text box - plus 'info-only' screens
  • Three straightforward ways to analyse or export data:
    1. View/print tables and cross-tabs of survey results (or view individual responses)
    2. Have each new response emailed to your inbox in HTML format
    3. Download an Excel-ready spreadsheet
  • Unlimited questions, unlimited responses (whatever your web server can handle)
  • Secure, multi-user admin interface to create and edit questionnaires, and export results
  • Unlimited, completely flexible templates - design attractive forms using your logo and control the layout with stylesheets
  • Built in file manager to let users upload and reference logos, images or downloadable documents within surveys
  • Multipage surveys using pagebreaks between groups of questions
  • Make any question 'required' to ensure respondents complete it
  • Optional cookie-based protection against repeated submission of forms
  • Plain-text questionnaire export
  • Raw data editor - take out duplicate or erroneous responses manually to keep the reports clean
  • One-click project backup - get the key project files emailed to you whenever you like
  • Straightforward configuration options to control how each survey is displayed
  • By default, forms are accessible to WCAG Priority 2/Bobby 'AA' Level and code complies with XHTML standards - and work with Javascript turned off
  • Underlying questionnaire scripts are in a simplified XML-like format which advanced users can manipulate directly for even faster editing

Who uses AskPeople?

All kinds of people use AskPeople to help them collect information online - from creating booking or enquiry forms to handling customer feedback, testing new ideas to exploring the profile of website visitors. Here are few examples of how AskPeople helps:

Small businesses

...save money on software licences and monthly subscriptions by using AskPeople to develop customer feedback or enquiry forms they can use on their website and analyse using regular office software. It's great to be able to look up an individual customer's feedback report before making a sales call, and the topline reports help with the quarterly figures and spreadsheets. Favourite feature: new business enquiry forms get emailed directly to their inbox so they can respond straightaway.

Web designers & developers

...use AskPeople to build online surveys into client website projects. They love the flexible templates, standards-compliant, low-Javascript, accessible code and cross-browser support. Above all, they like the 5-minute installation and simple control panel which means clients can set up their own feedback forms with the same look and feel as the website.

Students

...use AskPeople to generate surveys for their assignments - it helps them build robust questionnaires which they can email to classmates or mailing lists, and compare patterns of responses between different groups of people. They share access to reports with supervisors and classmates, while retaining control over the questionnaire and data.

Savvy office workers

...use AskPeople as an alternative to getting comments by email and laboriously cutting and pasting the replies or using clunky Microsoft Word forms. They keep the boss and coworkers happy by running their own professional-looking staff surveys and creating feedback forms without the hassle and expense of using a market research agency or getting IT involved.

Sports & community groups

...use AskPeople to get feedback from members, creating signup forms for events, handling new membership application forms easily and doing quick membership polls on topical issues.


And of course, you can use AskPeople in lots of other ways too - in fact, whenever a web-based form could help you collect basic information.

Screenshots

Some example surveys:

Install in 5 minutes

Installer screen

Installing AskPeople is pretty straightforward - you download the application, unzip it, upload it to your PHP webserver, and go to the installer page, where you set up the tool and create yourself as the master user. On a slow day, it shouldn't take more than five minutes. There's no need to fiddle around in the PHP files - unless you really want to.

My Projects

My Projects screen

Once you're logged in, you can see all of your AskPeople projects, and all the available templates you can use to style your forms and surveys. Here's where you administer users and upload logos, pictures or documents you want to include within survey questions or templates.

Project Manager

Project Manager screen

When you're working with a survey or form, the Project Manager gives you easy access to every stage of the process, from writing the questions, controlling the survey behaviour through the simple settings panel, to managing the data and reports once the responses start to come in. You can also generate plain-text versions of the questionnaire to reformat for paper-based forms or to send to your contacts without web access.

Questionnaire Editor

Questionnaire Editor screen

The questionnaire editor helps you build the survey step by step, inserting new questions, moving questions around, inserting page breaks and more. Creating a question is as easy as typing in the question and putting each response option on a new line in the options box. The survey link is shown at the top of the screen so you can switch to preview mode and back again quickly.

Survey Preview

Survey Preview screen

Survey preview shows you what your survey/form will look like when published. You can complete the form just like a respondent, but you can switch back to the Project Manager or Questionnaire Editor using the handy links at the top of the page.

Topline Report

Topline Report screen

The topline report displays counts (the number of respondents who gave each answer) and percentages, and you can cross-analyse one predefined question against another. For example, you might compare whether customers who bought different products gave different ratings for overall satisfaction, or whether repeat visitors to your website are more positive about your new redesign than new visitors.

Individual Respondent Report

Individual Respondent Report screen

It's sometimes helpful to be able to look at each response individually - for example, if you're following up a new business enquiry form, or want to have a respondent's survey answers on screen before you call them up to discuss the issues in more depth. Individual reports let you browse each response received as a simple table of questions and answers.

Template Editor

Template Editor screen

AskPeople gives you virtually complete control over how the survey form looks, through HTML templates and cascading style sheets (CSS). You can create your own templates to match your website or company logo, or use one of the predefined templates.

FAQs & support

AskPeople is funded entirely from donations, but we do our best to provide help and support. There is some help documentation accessible from the Help tab within the application, or you can try one of the sources of information below:

Forum

We've set up a forum as a place to discuss AskPeople, ask questions to the AskPeople community and report bugs or request new features. Please check there first to see if your query has been addressed or to post new queries, or use the feedback form to contact us directly.

Frequently Asked Questions

Questionnaire functionality & template formatting

Can I have an answer option for a single/multi question which says 'Other, please specify', which lets respondents type in their own answer?

Yes, just include other_specify: as one of your options in the response list, and this will be automatically transformed into a text box for an open-ended 'Other' response. By default, the box label will be 'Other, please specify' but you could change this to 'Other website' by putting your custom label after the colon, like this - other_specify:Other website

Can I set up my questionnaire so that respondents only see one question on the screen at once, instead of the whole questionnaire being visible?

Yes, you can divide up a questionnaire using pagebreaks between questions or groups of questions. In the Questionnaire Editor, insert a new question where you want the pagebreak to be, and change the question type to 'pagebreak'.

How do you make the answer options for a single question run in a list horizontally across the screen, rather than in a vertical list?

This is possible if you're willing to do a bit of fiddling with CSS in the template. If you only want to make the options run horizontally for some of the questions, first you'll need to make a note of the question numbers you want to change. Next, edit the template you're using by choosing it from the My Projects screen. Since you'll be changing the template, you may want to make a copy if it is also used by other projects (to do this: while editing, give it a new name and then save it). Then, enter the following CSS declaration in the template:

	div#q1 p.singleoption, div#q2 p.singleoption {
		  float: left;
		  margin-right: 20px;
	}

... where #q1 and #q2 are the IDs of the single questions whose layout you want to change. If you want to change all single questions to be displayed in this way, just use p.singleoption. If you want to change the layout of options for a multi question, use p.multioption instead in the same way.

How do I set up a grid question, where respondents rate a number of statements on a common scale?

You can make any single or multi question into a grid just by entering the scale you would like to use in the scale box. For example, if your question is 'How much do you like each of the following fruits?', then you might have:

	Apples
	Pears
	Bananas

... in the options box, and:

	My favourite!
	They're OK
	Don't like them

... in the scale box. Have a go and see - it's easier to try than to explain, and you can always revert to a single or multi question by deleting the scale options later. One thing to bear in mind is that you can't use 'Other, please specify' question options in grid questions - sorry.

What are 'info' question types for?

Info questions aren't really questions - they're just a block of text. In some forms or questionnaires, it can be helpful to include an introduction to a series of questions, and that's what these are for. Just put the text in the question text field, and leave the options and scale boxes blank.

Can I validate the answers given to questions (e.g. to ensure a certain field is not left blank, or that numbers entered are within a certain range)?

By default, all questions are optional, but you can require respondents to type an answer by setting the 'This question is:' menu to required in the Questionnaire Editor. AskPeople doesn't currently support more sophisticated validation, but let us know if you would find it useful.

How do I customise the template with my logo?

First, make sure your logo is an appropriate size (typically no more than 200 pixels wide, but it depends on your template) and saved in a web-ready format such as JPEG, GIF or PNG with .jpg, .gif or .png in the filename. You can upload your logo using the File Manager on the My Projects screen. Then, edit the template you want to use - the NeatBoxes template which comes with AskPeople is a good example of how to include a client logo. Look for the #clientlogo CSS declaration, and change the 'templates/images/logo1.jpg' image text to the image you just uploaded - or any other image on the web. You may need to amend the width and height a bit, so save the template as you go and check the preview until your logo looks right.

Can I use filtering or routing to ask different questions on the basis of answers given previously?

Sorry, that functionality has not yet been added to AskPeople - but let us know via the feedback form if that would be useful to you.

What is the point of the 'raw XML' editing feature?

The underlying format of AskPeople questionnaires is a basic form of XML used to describe the questions and options. Most users will probably find it more convenient to use the Questionnaire Editor to construct and edit questionnaires, but if you're comfortable with XML, the 'Edit raw script' function accessed from the Project Manager is a way to get the whole questionnaire on screen and do quick find-and-replace actions or cut and paste sections. Use at your own risk - be especially careful of the question IDs as it's easy to get questions out of sequence when editing the XML directly.

Rather than showing a thank you message at the end of a survey, I want respondents to be redirected to my website. How do I do this?

Go to 'Manage project settings' from the Project Manager screen, and scroll down to 'Final URL'. If you enter a URL here, AskPeople will redirect the respondent to that address when they click the final submit button of the form/survey, and will not show the thank you message defined in the 'Message shown when questionnaire submitted' setting. Note that you can also customise the label of the button they see - for example, we changed it to 'Send feedback' for the feedback form on this website, rather than the default 'Finish Survey' - again, this is one of the project settings.

Dealing with data & reports

How can I tell respondents apart? Can I send them unique links to use?

When a respondent accesses the survey form, AskPeople checks whether the link they used includes a uid=123 value. If so, then this uid (User ID) of '123' is saved to the datafile along with their responses; if not, then the response is recorded as an anonymous one. So, if you want to be able to tell your responses apart (for example, so you can match survey respondents up to a customer database via their customer number, or to know which contacts from a mailing list have responded to your survey), make sure you include a &uid=UNIQUEID value, for example:
http://www.askpeople.co.uk/demo/survey.php?sid=DF4FC7&uid=01234

OK, I've had lots of responses to my survey now. How can I stop people continuing to fill in the form?

In the Project Manager, choose Manage Project Settings and change the Survey Status option from 'Open' to 'Closed'. Any subsequent visitors to your survey will see a polite message telling them the survey is no longer accepting responses (you can edit this message in the Survey Closed Message setting just below the Survey Status option).

Can I get the results of a form emailed to me as soon as they are submitted?

Yes - each response will be saved to the datafile, but you can also specify an email address at which you would like to be sent an HTML version of their response. This is sent immediately when the form is submitted. To enable this for a project, go to Manage project settings from the Project Manager screen, and scroll down to the 'Send each completed survey form by email to:' setting, and enter a valid email address. Emails will come through with an HTML attachment which looks like the Individual Response Report you can see from the Project Manager screen.

Someone submitted a form twice by accident. Can I take that data out of the results and reports?

Yes - from the Project Manager, click on 'View & edit raw data'. Each response appears as a row in the field, starting with the date and time it was submitted. Find the row you want to remove, delete it and save the datafile. You'll need to be careful of course when doing this, as it's easy to inadvertently delete the wrong responses - consider making a backup of the datafile first ('Backup project by email' from the Project Manager), which only takes a couple of seconds.

I want to let someone else see the reports, but I don't want to give them access to the rest of the survey. How can I do this?

The best way is to create a new user with fewer access privileges. Go to My Projects and choose 'Manage users'. Create a new user with an access level of 2. Make a note of the login details, and give these to your colleague, along with a direct link to the report page (this is shown in the blue strip at the top of the Individual Response and Topline Reports.

In a Topline Report, I want to compare results of one grid question against another, but it won't let me. Why not?

Topline reports only let you cross analyse (the vertical columns) by simple single or multi questions - crossing one grid against another gets too complicated to display easily. You can analyse a single or multi grid question against a simple single or multi question though.

Security & Accessibility

How secure are the questionnaires and datafiles?

Results from the questionnaires are stored in plain text format as .dat files in the 'surveys' directory, and permissions are set to enable AskPeople to read and write to these files. During installation, security is enabled (using .htaccess) which denies access to these files to casual browsers, but we still recommend that you remove any datafiles once the survey has closed and ensure your server is fully up to date with patches for PHP, Apache and the latest version of this software. Incidentally, surveys use seemingly random IDs, so it is unlikely that an authorised browser would be able to guess a questionnaire ID. Finally, you should make regular backups of your projects using the 'Backup project by email' function from the Project Manager screen. This will email the questionnaire, datafile, settings and template to the email address of the user currently logged in.

How can I stop someone filling in my form more than once?

AskPeople includes cookie-based protection against multiple responses. To enable this for a project, go to Manage project settings from the Project Manager screen, and scroll down to the 'Block respondents from completing more than one questionnaire' setting, and check it's set to on. When a respondent completes your survey, a cookie will be set on their machine for 30 days. If they attempt to access the survey link again, they will be shown a message politely thanking them for their previous submission. You should be aware that cookie-based blocking isn't 100% effective, as a determined respondent could simply access the survey from a different machine or delete the cookie.

Capacity & technical requirements

Does AskPeople meet accessibility standards?

We have tried to make AskPeople accessible to a reasonable level - with the default templates and a simple questionnaire, we believe forms and surveys should conform to the Web Content Advisory Group's Level 2 (sometimes known as 'AA', and similar to Section 508). Accessibility depends as much on the content as the technology though, so it's important to ensure that forms are written clearly, images are given appropriate alternative descriptions, and colour combinations are chosen with care. We would be very interested to discuss the accessibility of the tool with people who use assistive technology such as screenreaders - please get in touch with us at info at askpeople dot co dot uk.

How many respondents and questions can AskPeople support?

In theory, the sky's the limit - whatever your web server and connection can cope with. In practice, the Questionnaire Editor is designed to handle questionnaires with up to 500 questions, and most servers will probably struggle to handle tens of thousands of responses given that AskPeople is based on flat files rather than a database. But we've successfully used the technology behind AskPeople to manage surveys with over 2,000 responses before, so you should be fine unless you're expecting really heavy traffic.

Do AskPeople questionnaires require Javascript to be enabled on respondents' PCs?

No, AskPeople surveys don't require Javascript in order to work (unlike SurveyMonkey, for example). A small piece of Javascript is included in the survey file, but if a respondent doesn't have it enabled, the survey will still work fine for them. The administration parts of AskPeople use some Javascript, but should still be usable without it.

I need to survey some people who don't have web access. How can I give the form to them?

You have a few options in this situation: preview the survey and print off a copy of the survey form; talk them through it on the phone; or create a version of the form you can send as an email attachment. To do this, go to 'Export plain text version' from the Project Manager screen, and you'll be able to download a version of the questionnaire with all the formatting stripped out. This may be suitable as it stands, or may benefit from a bit of tidying up in a word processor before sending by email - hopefully it should save you some time cutting a pasting from the online form.

Licensing, hosting & development

What does AskPeople cost?

That's up to you. The software isn't free of charge, but there's no fixed price for it - we ask you to try it out, and if you find it useful, please make us an appropriate donation to help fund future maintenance and development. We understand that you may want to incorporate AskPeople within other projects for which you charge - that's totally cool with us. Please see the points on licencing below about the restrictions that apply to adapting AskPeople.

What licencing restrictions are there?

AskPeople is licenced under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike licence. This means you can use, adapt and redistribute the software as long as you:

- Name AskPeople and attribute the source as Pentri.com
- Release any modified versions you produce under this same licence (i.e. you cannot take this software, adapt it, and then charge for it)

For more information, see the Creative Commons website and read the full licence text.

Can I adapt AskPeople and sell it to my clients?

According to the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike licence under which AskPeople is distributed, you are free to use AskPeople within your projects whether commercial or not, as long as you attribute the software to Pentri and publish free of charge any modified versions you develop based upon it according to a similar licence. So, you are NOT allowed to adapt AskPeople for sale, though you can adapt it and distribute it freely. If you have any queries or would like to discuss special terms for using AskPeople, please contact us via the feedback form and we'll be happy to talk.

I'd like a hosted version of AskPeople - do you offer this?

At the moment, AskPeople is just available for download for you to host on your own web server. We're thinking about providing a hosted option, so please let us know using the feedback form if this is something you'd like to explore with us.

Feedback

How can I suggest a new feature or report a bug?

We'd be delighted to hear from you - please contact us via the feedback form, or use the relevant topics in the forum.

Do you offer support for AskPeople? I want a custom feature or help setting it up

Generally speaking, the primary support we offer is via the forum, help pages and this FAQ. But do get in touch via the feedback form if you have any queries, and we're happy to discuss options for developing customised installations or new features, and that's something we've done for clients before.

What happened to the 'Save and return later' feature that used to be in Pentri Clipboard?

Sorry, that feature has not been included in AskPeople for security and usability reasons - please give us your feedback if you would find it useful.

Feedback

We'd love to hear your suggestions and we'll do our best to answer queries about AskPeople - just fill in the AskPeople feedback form below. Don't forget, you can also post messages in the forum and there's some useful reference information in the help section.