Development Update Jan 2021

2 mins
Published on January 19th, 2021By Gary Cattermole

We continually invest in our technology and our online survey and reporting platform is the main focus of this investment.

Our monthly blogs will look at upcoming developments of new features and additions to keep you fully up to date on our development roadmap.

January 2021 Sprint

  • 360 Feedback – a brand new 360 feedback element is being developed and added to both the survey and reporting platform, allowing for fast, simple and effective deployment, administration and reporting. Key Features:
    • Easy setup and administration of small and large-scale 360 and 180 feedback programmes
    • Centralised automated reporting including individual participant reports and overall reporting
    • Interactive workbooks allowing for participant and coachee additions, comments, observations and action planning
  • Automated email updates – based on client feedback, the emails generated by the reporting system are receiving an overhaul. Key Features:
    • Project-specific text and information detailing project name and report type
    • Ability to detail who should/ shouldn’t receive emails from the reporting platform
    • Look and feel customisation to ensure emails are on brand for clients
  • General improvements – behind-the-scenes changes that improve reliability and performance. Key Features:
    • Other (please specify) responses are handled and stored more efficiently
    • Font colour defaults re-set and made consistent
    • Workbook and Headlines performance improvements

Historic improvements

To keep you fully updated we have included below a list of recent improvements that you may not be aware of.

  • Auto scheduling of reminders – added facility in the survey platform to send reminders based on either ‘number of days’ from the initial invite email or on a specific ‘date and time’.
  • Headlines – major overhaul of the headline crosstabs – now available online in Beta format with the ability to filter results. Also, work was undertaken to improve output in Excel format (formatting, layout and design).
  • Headlines – ability to view % positive only version, thereby providing a Heatmap version of the Headlines.
  • AI free text analysis – for larger scale surveys, we have hooked into Microsoft Text Analytics service providing multi-lingual automated analysis of free text feedback including key themes, words and sentiment.
  • Comparison report update – an overhaul of comparison reports improving speed and reliability and also updating the dashboard page to be consistent with Workbooks and Headlines.

The above is designed to give an overview of our monthly sprints and development work on our survey platform.

We always welcome feedback and insights from our users – if there is any specific feature or feature set you’d like to see in our software – let us know. And should you wish to discuss any of our professional employee survey services, which include bespoke staff surveys, 360 feedback surveys and pulse surveys, contact the team at The Survey Initiative.