Using web forms
You can use SurveyCTO to collect data online via the web. Any modern web browser can be used to fill out forms, and it is up to you whether you require users to login before being allowed to fill out forms. Though an Internet connection is required to fill out forms, the server saves a temporary copy of each form as it is being filled out; users who lose their connections, reboot, or otherwise experience difficulties mid-form can resume filling out their forms by using the same web browser. Whenever they return, SurveyCTO will offer to resume where they left off.
For an example of what web forms are capable of, check out our web form example.By default, web data collection is disabled for all forms on your server – so you can only collect data using SurveyCTO Collect on a mobile device. To enable web data collection, go to the Collect tab, scroll down to the section titled Web data collection, and click the toggle button to the ON position. Whenever that section is enabled, users will be able to go to a URL like this one to find and fill out forms (where the "servername" is your SurveyCTO server name):
https://servername.surveycto.com/collect
Also by default, all of your forms will require users to log in with an account authorized to collect data. In other words, all of your forms start out private, and no "anonymous" access will be allowed. From the Configure tab of your SurveyCTO server console, you can manage the list of authorized logins (user accounts) by scrolling down to the Your users section.
To allow anonymous (not-logged-in) users to fill out one of your forms, scroll to the Web data collection section of the Collect tab, select a form from the list, click Settings, and enable Allow anonymous form access. Once you save that setting, users will no longer be required to log in in order to fill out that form. Please be careful: this means that anybody can submit data!
In the Web data collection settings for a given form, you can control many aspects of how the form will appear and function. For example, if you want to make sure people fill out your form one question at a time (without skipping around), you can fully disable non-linear form navigation. For more information about how users navigate through a form, see the topic on designing workflow.
From the list of forms in the Web data collection section, you can also click Fill out to start filling out any of your forms, or click Share to retrieve a sharable link to the form itself. Users can log in to https://servername.surveycto.com/collect to get a list of forms that they have permission to fill out, or they can click a link that you share with them to navigate directly to the form.
For users filling out forms anonymously, the interface is very simple: they just fill out and submit the form, and there are very few options available to them. Primarily, they can use a Change language option (see the topic on translating web forms for more details), and they can Start over if they so desire. Anonymous users will also see a simplified version of the 'save and submit' screen when they reach the end of a form.
By default, logged-in users have more options while filling out forms. For example, only logged-in users will have the option to override the default width (if enabled in the form's Web data collection settings). And, importantly, they can access the web version of the SurveyCTO Collect main menu, which closely resembles the menu of options available to mobile users using the SurveyCTO Collect app. Users can Fill Blank Form, Edit Saved Form, and Delete Saved Form – and, if case management is enabled for your server, Manage Cases.
Logged-in users can save a partially-filled form and later finish it by returning to Edit Saved Form. But be careful: the list of saved forms under Edit Saved Form and Delete Saved Form is the same for everybody sharing a single login. If several people share the same login credentials, they will all see each other's saved forms. It is better to create separate user accounts for separate people so that they do not get confused by others' saved forms or have access to others' responses.
For more information about web forms, check out our webinar on web forms.