Random Web Page Serving

[girish]

Hi folks - hope you can help with this problem (and hope you can understand my explanation of it!).

I am designing a web based questionnaire that uses the FM Web Companion (v. 4.1) to serve my web pages and dump participant responses into a FM database. I have two versions of the questionnaire that I would like to administer, with alternate participants being served a different version.

So, for example, Participant One views the questionnaire page and sees Version A, then Participant Two views it and sees Version B. When Participant Three comes along, they get Version A again, and so on - alternating between A & B each time.

Any ideas on what would be the best way to do this? (I'm pretty much a novice with html, and have no javascript etc skills, unfortunately).

Thanks

Girish..

[Vaughan]

Have the two or more versions of the surveys as records in a database, then use the -findany action tag to pull out one at random.

[girish]

Hi Vaughan - thanks for this, but I think I'm missing something here :-[

I tried this and, although I could get the -findany tag to work, it seems to me to only work to retrieve data entered into the database, rather than the input fields themselves(?)

I'm also not sure what you mean by having two surveys as records in the database. I can see how to create a single record with all of the survey questions (from surveys A and : in it, but not sure how to create survey A and survey B as two 'records' in the same database.

So, I could get the -findany tag to pull back information (completed records) from the database, but can't see how to use it to randomly display two distinct sets of input fields?

Am I totally misunderstanding something here?

[Vaughan]

The fields in the records are the *questions* not the answers. There is a separate database where the fields in the records are *answers.*

[abkaplan]

girish ;

That is an interesting subject. to see how it can be done I prepared databases and the web pages to specify the A and B group questions in an order you ask. I tried to send the sample zip file but I can not access your e mail. if you want I can send it to you. Basicly the sistem runs like that:

There are two kinds of questions.

One enters the questio.. page and the latest group is being changed automatically from A to B and he sees the B group questions...

Another one enters he sees the questions according to the latest group. A group questions...( according to a global latest_group_name field value )

on the web pages forms included

entrance.htm

<form....>

input type hidden name script value=" a script changing the value of the latest_group field ( global ) every time from A to B and B to A "

format search htm

<input type submit name findany ..value="enter the main page".>

search. htm

<form ... >

<input type hidden name:group_value="[fmpfield:latest_group]" >

format question list htm

<input type submit name -find ...value="see the questions". >

question list htm

fmp-record

question -

<form>

answer field

edit

</form>

- user name ( can be token - question id ... and necessary relations...)

/fmp-record

and so on...

The best way I think is to examine the codes...

best wishes

Abkaplan

[ March 27, 2001: Message edited by: abkaplan ]

[Vaughan]

My initial suggestion was to have two databases: "questions" and "answers." In the "questions" database, each record is a survey with each field being the text of a question. If the survey has 10 questions the database needs 10 fields. To get two surveys, the questions database has two records in it.

When people connect into your site, they actually connect into a url FMPro?-db=questions&-lay=web&-format=survey.htm&-findany where the -findany action randomly hands out survey 1 and survey 2. You won't have control over who gets what, but it should even out to 50-50 between the two surveys.

When people fill in the survey, their answers go into the "answers" database more-or-less exactly the way you have it set up now.

[girish]

Hi guys - thanks for the responses, and sorry I'm so late replying :-{

Thanks for the suggestions Abkaplan, I'm impressed that you put so much effort in! And thanks also Vaughan, that last message clarified things for me.

In fact, what I ended up doing is doing the 'randomisation' in a web page using standard html. I created one database with all of the questions in it, then two sets of web pages, each set containing only certain questions. I have a 'front-end' that the user sees before starting the questionnaire - the link that they follow to get to the questionnaire leads to two different sets of pages, ie. the link is a text string, half of which points to one url and the other half of which points to another url. This should, I hope, on average give me around a 50-50 split.

Quick and dirty, I know, but it'll do the job for me at present. I might play around with something more sophisticated when I get a chance.

Thanks again

Girish..