Getting Started with

SimaPro Collect

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Title: Getting started with SimaPro Collect

Written by: PRé Consultants

Report version: 1

Date: June 2015

Copyright: © 2002-2015 PRé. Some rights reserved. This work is

licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-

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needed.

Support: +31 33 4504010

support@pre-sustainability.com

Website: www.pre-sustainability.com

www.simapro.com

Introduction

SimaPro Collect allows you to easily create, send and track surveys to optimize data collection for

your sustainability projects. This guide is meant to help you, the Expert user, with creating your first

survey.

For additional support, please visit our Help Center at http://support.simapro.com , or contact us

directly by going to > Contact support.

Contents

1 Creating your survey ............................................................................................................... 5

1.1 Adding general information .......................................................................................... 5

1.2 Adding sections .................................................................................................................. 5

1.3 Adding questions per section ....................................................................................... 5

1.4 Adding conditionals ......................................................................................................... 6

2 Adding respondents ................................................................................................................. 7

3 Creating your invite and sending out the survey .......................................................... 7

4 Tracking progress and sending reminders ....................................................................... 8

5 Closing the survey ..................................................................................................................... 9

6 Viewing and analyzing results .............................................................................................. 9

1 Creating your survey

1.1 Adding general information

From the Survey overview dashboard, click New survey.

Add a Survey Title. Press Enter to save.

Add an introduction to your survey. Click Close survey introduction to collapse the field.

Select the Due date in order for survey respondents to know when the deadline is for

submitting the survey. Please note that the date format is dd-mm-yyyy.

1.2 Adding sections

You can split your survey into any number of sections, in order to group questions covering the

same topic. The advantage of using sections is that you can define survey respondents per

section. So you may want to send the entire survey to some respondents, while only certain

sections of the survey to others.

Click Add section and enter a section title. Press Enter to save. (Click the field again to edit

the text).

Add an introduction to your section. Click Close section introduction to collapse the field.

Repeat the steps above to add more sections.

You can reorder sections from the Edit survey dashboard by dragging and dropping the section title

from

1.3 Adding questions per section

Click Add question.

Enter Question (tip: press Shift+Enter to start a new line).

Enter Guidance. This is an optional field that allows you to provide additional explanation

regarding the question. You can also add multiple attachments as guidance. Click Guidance

Documentation>Select files> Open. Click Close Guidance Documentation to collapse the

field.

You can only upload PDF files with a maximum size of 5MB (per file).

Select which format the answer should be in. Available answer formats: percentage, yes/no,

whole number, decimal, multiple choice (one or more answers), text, grid.

To delete an answer option, drag it from and drop it in the Trash.

For a number of answer formats, you have the option to Add ranking. This feature comes in

handy when viewing and analyzing results as you can define a scale to rate how ‘good’ or

‘bad’ a respondent’s answer is.

If relevant, you can also add improvement opportunities. These serve as tips for survey

respondents on how to improve their performance in relation to the question at hand.

Improvement opportunities are shown to respondents once they have answered a question.

Finally, click the Save question button.

Repeat the steps above to add more questions.

Click the Preview survey button at any time to view what the survey respondent will see.

You can reorder questions from the Edit survey dashboard by dragging and dropping the question

box from

1.4 Adding conditionals

After you have created all survey questions, you can add conditional logic to questions with the

answer format multiple choice and yes/no, so that respondents are directed to a specific question

based on their answer. Please note that you can only add one conditional per question.

Click Add Conditionals.

Click the drop-down field When to select the question you want to add a condition to.

Select Is or IsNot.

Select the answer that the condition should apply to.

Click the drop-down field then show to select the question the respondent should be

directed to.

Click Add condition.

You can now see the condition you just added under the Active conditionals section.

Applying conditionals means that some questions will be hidden from some respondents. This will

affect the numbering sequence of the survey questions.

2 Adding respondents

Each section can be sent to different respondents. Under the questions in each section, click

Add survey respondents.

Add a respondent name and email then press Enter.

The auto-complete function allows you to select respondents that already exist, so you do

not have to add them manually again.

To delete a respondent, drag it from and drop it in the Trash.

A survey can be sent to up to 250 respondents.

3 Creating your invite and sending out the

survey

Click Edit email template to review the default invite that is sent to respondents.

Make your changes and click Save.

Click Send test mail to receive an email preview of what the respondent will see.

Click Send survey.

You will get an overview of all respondents added to your survey.

SimaPro Collect will run a check to validate whether all respondents have email addresses. If

some fields are empty, you first have to enter those respondents’ emails before you can send

the survey.

Click Send.

Once the survey is sent out, it will move from the Draft to the In progress section of the

Survey overview dashboard.

You can still add respondents to a survey after it has been sent out. Add the respondents per

section, as explained above, and click Resend invitations. You will get a list of all respondents, but

only the recently-added ones will be selected. Click Resend.

4 Tracking progress and sending reminders

From the Survey overview dashboard go to the In progress section, and click View survey

progress of the survey you would like to track.

Next to the respondents’ names under each section, you will find an icon that reflects their

progress :

Pie – If empty, it means that the respondent has not yet answered any question

in that section. The pie will ‘fill up’ to reflect the progress of that respondent.

Completed pie - respondent has answered all questions in that section, but not

yet submitted the survey.

Grey lock – respondent has submitted the survey but did not answer all questions

in that section.

Green Lock – respondent has submitted the survey and completed all questions

for that section (not necessarily entire survey).

You can click on those icons to view each respondent’s answers.

To send reminders to respondents to fill in your survey, click Resend invitations. You will

get a list of only those respondents who have not yet submitted the survey. Click Resend.

If you want to send a different email than the initial survey invite, make sure to edit the email

template before you resend the invites!

5 Closing the survey

It is up to when you would like to close the survey. In practice, closing the survey means those

respondents cannot submit their answers anymore and can only view the survey. To close your

survey:

From the Survey overview dashboard go to the In progress section, and hover over the top

of the survey (box) you would like to close.

Click

You will get a confirmation message. Click Yes.

The survey will now move from the In progress section to the Completed section.

The survey will not close automatically after the due date has passed.

6 Viewing and analyzing results

You can also view the intermediate results while the survey is still in progress. From the Survey

overview dashboard go to the In progress section, and click View survey progress of the survey you

would like to track. Click View results.

From the Survey overview dashboard go to the Completed section.

Click View results to view the aggregated results.

Click Download results to export your survey results to Excel (in .csv format).

To view the answers submitted by a certain respondent, click Back to survey and click the

lock icon next to the respondent’s name.