Playing around with Google Forms
September 11th, 2008
The other day I noticed an new feature on Google Docs. When I tried to created a new document, it gave me the option of creating a Form. I was curious, so I started playing around with it and realized that Google Form is a simple, powerful, and free way to create online surveys which can be emailed to anyone or embedded in a blog or website. All the responses are captured in a Google spreadsheet, and charting features make it easy to see the results. I'm writing a magazine article about business, social networking, and Twitter, and decided to post a Google Form survey on this page. But it didn't work. My blog is powered by Drupal now, and I can't find a way for it accept HTML code right now, so I'll have to link to the survey instead. So here it is: Please take this survey using Google Forms. I emailed one to all my employees last week and got 32 answers in just a couple of days. It was so easy to do. I am currently looking for a way to ask questions to some of our 300,000 Daily Active Users on our We're Related Facebook application, and I consider Google Forms the leading candidate right now. It offers free-form text responses (one line or paragraph), multiple choice, checkboxes, choose from a list, scale (1-n) responses. Most importantly, it integrates into my daily work flow, since I live in gmail and google docs, and is super easy to use. I was going to start use PollDaddy.com before I came across Google Forms. I'd like to know what tools or sites you use for doing email surveys or embedded online surveys, and if you have tried Google Forms. If so, are you going to switch?
September 11th, 2008 at 12:53 PM
I love Google Forms. We use it for client feedback as a matter of standard practice at the close of each project.
If you're looking for something that's a bit more robust and completely customizable, I would strongly recommend SurveyGizmo.
September 11th, 2008 at 12:55 PM
Drupal has a poll module included by default. Have you tried that?
September 11th, 2008 at 13:06 PM
I wasn't aware of the Drupal poll module, but I'd have to hire my Drupal developer to implement it, and I'm trying to be cheap. On the other hand, I'll have to hire him in order to make Drupal accept my HTML code so I can embed polls, so this might be a good way to go.
Can anyone compare the Drupal poll feature with Google Forms, or other online survey tools?
September 11th, 2008 at 13:07 PM
Have you tried wufoo.com or polleverywhere.com?
September 11th, 2008 at 13:46 PM
Google forms has been around for a while (as a part of spreadsheets) but just recently got promoted to a "first class citizen" in the Google Doc universe.
I've used it a few times to get feedback from my department on different changes we've made. It's very easy and convenient. Stack Overflow used it for their beta signup mechanism http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2008/08/bad-news-good-news/
September 11th, 2008 at 15:43 PM
Inasmuch as Google Docs and Open Office are an important part of the OASYS effort; and inasmuch as OASYS is already trying to define and implement data structure standards governing how we represent the names of people and places in the internet (sort of like the semantic web initiative over at W3c); and inasmuch as the sematic web initiative could potentially change blow the doors open for web based genealogical research; I think it's important to support Google Docs, even if a custom solution would be a better fit for your the specifics of this blog.
September 11th, 2008 at 19:53 PM
No Drupal developer is needed to add the Drupal poll module. Drupal ships with the poll module. Just go to http://www.paulallen.net/admin/build/modules and find the poll module under "core-optional'. Enable the module by clicking its checkbox then submitting the form at the bottom of the page. Then you can create Polls much like you create blogs.
The poll module does only basic polls -- much like the one you did through Google docs. A Drupal poll would be nicer as then the results will display in your blog.
BTW, I'd guessing your problem with embedding the Google survey resulted from using the wrong input format. When you create a new blog post, below the body form there's a place where you can select the input format for your blog entry. The default input format is "Filtered HTML" which, as the name suggests, filters some less common HTML tags and those considered more dangerous. Odds are that Google Forms uses an HTML tag that "Filtered HTML" filters out. If you select "Full HTML" as your input format, then you shouldn't have any more trouble embedding a form. That certainly tripped me up a few times back when I was new at Drupal.
September 12th, 2008 at 04:35 AM
Kyle, your comment is incredibly helpful! Thanks so much.
September 12th, 2008 at 20:22 PM
I'm a big fan of surveymonkey. It's easy to use, and all of my surveys are stored in one place. Also you can share certain levels of detail in responses to individuals -- more on a need to know basis. That appeals to me as well.
September 14th, 2008 at 03:05 AM
This is a great aspect of Google Spreadsheets I never knew, thanks for revealing it to me. Spreadsheet apps did always have forms and stuff, but I never found them useful on the offline ones. When it meets SaaS spreadsheets - it's really a whole new ball game!
September 14th, 2008 at 07:09 AM
Thanks for highlighting this, Paul. It's always good to have alternatives. With the comments this has become quite a resource for those wishing to do surveys. I was wondering how the various alternatives prevent multiple votes. Is that always built in or is that a worthwhile subject for a follow-up post. Thanks in anticipation. :)
September 14th, 2008 at 17:17 PM
I've been using blog flux polls http://polls.blogflux.com/
Seems to work well apart from word press constantly trying to remove the script from my article if I usual the visual editor to make changes to it.
Can you make the google forms results automatically show on a website?
September 16th, 2008 at 02:28 AM
Drupal has a webform module which is good for slightly more complex forms that poll can not handle.
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