Latest update from the dev.labs: we are working hard onincorporating rich text into the PDA surveys module of SurveyToGo. Although itwasn’t easy we managed to do it and you can expect to be able to add rich textformatting to the questions in the mobile survey as soon as the next version willbe released. Here’s a sample screenshot that shows how it will look like:

What is rich text good for?

Well, it’s mostly important in situations where either thesurvey is being filled by the person itself instead of a surveyor reading outthe survey question. It’s also useful to point out certain terms to thesurveyor by making them bold or painting them in different colors.

This is question that initially the answer sounds like it should be a big fat YES, right?

For this reason we are now working on adding this functionality as an integral part of SurveyToGo so that if you will be using a GPS enabled device SurveyToGo will automatically attach the GPS location to each survey that you conduct.

We are also adding the ability in the operation console to show you on the actual location on the map so that you will be able to track exactly who did what WHERE :)

However, the question that bothers me is, given the fact that field surveys are also conducted inside a building, and since GPS devices do not get a signal when inside buildings the location you will be getting isn't that accurate after all... in SurveyToGo we are preparing a smart mechanism to get the most accurate place even if you are inside a building - but this is still a valid question...

I am still wondering what the answer is....

Let me know what you think!

As we were about to launch the updated version of SurveyToGo we've encountered some critical problems in Windows Vista. The automatic update simply doesn’t want to work. Since we don’t want to leave our Vista customers without a working version we will delay the launch until this critical bug is resolved.

However, we did manage to squeeze into this version a nice little MS Word exporter, which will allow you to generate a word document out of the survey results. This exporter will complete our suite of exporters available for the other Office products: MS Access & MS Excel. We also added an XML exporter which enables you to generate the results into an XML file (can be handy when integrating with other products).

The Shavuot holiday is over, and we have eaten all the cheese we could handle which is much more then recommended… but hey, it's holiday and its only once a year!

We've finally completed the move to our new office space which marks a new, much more comfortable & roomy time for us here in Dooblo J

Also, we are getting ready to release the next version of SurveyToGo, which is scheduled for 12/6. This version will incorporate the up till now beta-version of Landscape and VGA and square screen support. Thanks for everyone out there who took part in testing it and providing feedback, you guys rock!

Another big change in SurveyToGo is moving away from the Sealed/unsealed concept which at the time seemed like a nice concept but as we progress we find it to be more hindering then anything else.. so what will be there instead? Survey Modes.

A survey will be able to be in either in Draft / Test / Production mode, and you can change between modes without difficulty. The difference between draft mode and the other 2 is that when in draft mode the survey is NOT downloaded to the device, while in either test or production mode the survey IS downloaded to the device. The difference between test and production mode will be the fact that all the results that are generated when in test mode will have a special mark on them when you export them so that you know they were generated from test mode. This is a small step for now but is actually a big step towards the big august version which I am very eager to already share with you but currently I still can't…

What else is new in the upcoming version? Well, we also added a nice feature for you guys who are more advanced and are into integrations.. we added ability to define c# functions for your survey, and then reference these functions inside the scripts and rules. We also added an "Actions" menu that will be shown on the PDA inside the survey and you can control what options will be there – it can be either your custom c# functions or a child survey (yes, we added child surveys.. it’s a very nice feature, I will discuss it in a separate post) This is actually pretty neat since you can transform your survey into a small "system" that has custom actions the surveyor can use while running the surveys. We also added some easy functions to interact with serial ports and next up are built-in GPS functions as well..

I can go on and on, but for now I think I have depleted your attention span J so I will continue writing later on…

Let me tell you, it took us much longer then expected to get this version out… J

Turns out we had a lot of hard-coded "240x320" out there….

However, its done and we have a fully working RC version out there, and if anyone out there would like to test it out you can grab the CAB file from here:

http://stg.dooblo.net/ws/ppc/PPC/STG_PPC.cab

After downloading the CAB file, please copy it to your PDA and tap on it to install.

This version also fixes some regional setting problems some of you out there experienced.. so there is no need any longer to switch to US-English!

Ok, back to the code-mines... need to get that "seal/unseal" annoying thing out of the product! J

Ofer

It’s a very exciting time here in our quite town of Kefar Sava Israel, in our offices  We've got a lot of things going on, and here are 2 of them:

1. A New SurveyToGo version coming out at the end of this week, which will include support for all screen resolutions and landscape support as well.
2. We are moving to a new office, a bigger one, with enough space so that everyone on the team will be happy J

We are also very excited to work towards the August release of SurveyToGo which will include many new features that will both make SurveyToGo more simple to use and also much more productive and useful. I cant disclose the details yet but hopefully soon I will be able to share more with you all!

Additionally, we've also launched our new forums at: http://www.dooblo.net/forums which we hope will serve the community as a good knowledge base and a place to go to get answers.

One final word about extending SurveyToGo: We have developed SurveyToGo from the grounds up to be a very extensible product so that you will be able to integrate it with other applications/processes. For the more tech-advanced people out there – we have released our first version of our integration manual which talks in-depth about Survey Extension DLL's. You can read more about it on the forum at: http://www.dooblo.net/forums/Default.aspx?g=posts&t=7

P.S – Don’t forget extension DLL's aren’t your only option for integration, but more on that later down the road…

Ofer