Gravity Forms Surveys advanced results reporting
Gravity Forms is the ideal tool for creating surveys. Unlike many other tools, you can create the layout exactly as you want it. Their survey add-on enables additional layouts and back end reporting.
The challenge is how to best display the results.
The 5 options for displaying Gravity Forms surveys data
- Gravity Forms in-built advanced survey capability
- Export results into a spreadsheet
- Our GFChart plugin
- Other plugins
- Custom coding
1. Gravity Forms in-built advanced survey capability
Pros
- In-built,
- Minimal configuration required,
- Output is always up to date.
Cons
- Only displays on back end,
- Utilitarian look may not be suitable for client presentation,
- Only displays data not text.
2. Export results into a spreadsheet
Pros
- Allows significant customisation.
Cons
- Cumbersome manual updating required,
- Data always stale,
- Spreadsheet proficiency required,
- Limited support options.
3. Our GFChart plugin
Pros
- Display on front end, emails and PDFs*,
- Output is always up to date,
- Display data and text,
- Menu driven, no coding knowledge required,
- Fully supported and documented,
- Trusted,
- No quibble full refund guarantee if not entirely satisfied within 30 days of purchase.
Cons
- Purchase required,
- 80/20 solution that is not infinitely customisable.
4. Other plugins
Pros
- Might be a better fit for your exact needs,
- Some options are free.
Cons
- Time to search, trial and evaluate,
- Pedigree and future uncertain.
5. Custom coding
Pros
- Potential to create your perfect solution.
Cons
- Expertise / time / money required,
- Doubts over accuracy and adequacy of testing,
- Future maintenance overhead,
- PDF/Email capability has a significant overhead.
We built GFChart for people like you!
Many customers want advanced results reporting and we delivered with GFChart! The Gravity Forms team were so impressed with our work that they made us one of their very first Certified Developers.
Which type of survey do you have?
All surveys contain questions. The differences are how the answers will be used. Do you want your survey results for a group or an individual?
- Group surveys are for things like customer satisfaction, opinion polls or such like. Conclusions are produced from all responses or a sub-group (known as a ‘cohort’).
- Individual surveys* are for things like personality assessments, asset evaluations or a balanced score card assessment. Conclusions are produced for the single person or item being surveyed.
Do you want your results for a point in time, or monitor a trend?
- Point in time results are often used for post event reviews. The event has happened and you want to know how it was received.
- Trends are often used to monitor changes over time.
Do you want a numerical or written survey report?
- Numerical is ideal for understanding proportions, size and scale. It does rely on you asking the right questions.
- Written can be much more powerful. Reading the actual language used by your respondents reduces ambiguity and exposes any blind spots.
Do you want the report on a screen, in a PDF or email?
- Web page reports are bang up to date, but they cannot be easily stored or formally presented.
- PDF* reports sent via email can look more professional, but age over time.
GFChart can produce powerful reports for all these cases. *For individual surveys you will also need GravityView (purchase separately) alongside GFChart. For PDF reports you will also need Gravity PDF (obtain separately).
How do I produce the report that I want?
Gravity Forms is a pre-requisite
The Gravity Forms Elite license includes the ‘Survey’ capability which will produce the horizontal radio button likerts. Gravity Forms Basic license holders should use standard radio buttons, and improve the formatting using CSS.
Group Survey report
GFChart BASIC will quickly empower you to produce bar and pie charts from surveys produced in Gravity Forms. Many field types are supported including radio, dropdown, and checkbox. Our powerful filtering allows the results to be segmented into target cohorts. Shortcode filtering is also available for those who want to display results for different facilities.
GFChart ALL will give you our entire arsenal of firepower to deploy! It includes the Advanced Survey Customiser to easily change colors to match your palette and reorder bars and segments.
Individual Survey report
GFChart ALL and GravityView (purchase separately) together are required because:
- GravityView displays the individual survey response
- GFChart GravityView add-on displays a chart within GravityView. Monitor trends with our Trend add-on (beta available to customers on request). Both are contained in our GFChart ALL package.
Point in time report
GFChart BASIC will get you started. By default it will produce reports from all form entries. Our powerful relative date filtering allows you to ensure reports automatically report for the same time period e.g. yesterday, this week, last month, etc. You can even focus to specific times of day if you wish!
GFChart ALL will give you our entire arsenal of firepower to deploy! It includes Image Charts and Scheduled Notifications to automatically send reports at predetermined intervals.
Trend report
GFChart ALL is required because it includes Charting vs Time and our new Trend add-ons. (Trend beta available to customers on request). There are subtle but importance differences between these to ensure you have the perfect tool.
- Charting vs Time is ideal for monitoring trends over an aggregated time period e.g. how many support tickets are received per month. (The count is aggregated over a month).
- Trend is ideal for monitoring without aggregation e.g. amount of daily exercise. Reports are more granular because every data point is plotted. If you didn’t exercise it will show!!
Numerical report
GFChart BASIC contains Calculations which allows numbers to be inserted into posts and pages. You can also produce Bar and pie charts. Benefit from our full power with GFChart ALL.
Written report
GFChart ALL is required because it includes our new Text add-on which displays a table of free text survey responses.
Web page report
Any report produced by GFChart will display on a web page. Select mobile responsive sizing where required.
PDF email report
GFChart ALL is required because it includes our Image Charts and Scheduled Notifications add-ons.
- Image Charts renders charts for inserting into emails and PDFs. GFChart is fully compatible with GravityPDF (obtain separately). Your license includes unlimited rendering only subject to a fair use policy.
- Scheduled notifications enables you to send reports at predetermined intervals automatically.