General Properties

Row and Column Header Width

You can set the width in pixels on the row and column headers, to control the width of the columns in the aggregated table. Row Header Width is the width of the first column(s) with the row header texts. Column Header Width is the width of the column(s) under the column headers, that is, the columns in which the results are displayed. Row Header Width and Column Header Width are supported during export in PowerPoint 2007.

Totals First

Check this box to display the Totals at the top of the table.

Unweighted Total

Check this box in combination with a Weight Model (in Report properties or in Page properties) to include the un-weighted totals in the table.

Using Respondent Data

You can cross response rates on a survey by background variables. This functionality can be used for example for reporting on employee surveys where you would like to look at response rates for different departments.

Note: To use this functionality, the report must be based on BitStream files and the questions you wish to cross the response rate by must be defined as background variables.

Note: When reporting on respondent-level data, the table headers cannot contain variables that only exist on response level, there can be no filters affecting the table, and the table must not have a personalized filter applied. If the report is personalized, personalization must be turned off for the table to allow reporting on the respondent-level data.

1. Create BitStream files for the survey by going to the Reporting > Create Reportal BitStream files menu command (in the Forsta Plus project). Uncheck Only Complete Responses (go to BitStream Files Overview for more information).
2. In Reportal, open the Properties page for the report and select Use BitStream files.
3. Create an aggregated table.
4. Open the Properties page for the aggregated table and select Use Respondent Data.

Reporting for this table will now be based on the contents of the respondent table and the system variables in response_control. The following system variables can now be used in the table:

• Created Date - the dates and times when the respondents were "created" in the survey's respondent list.
• Interview Start - the date and time the respondent first accessed the interview.
• Interview End - the date and time the interview was completed.
• Interview Status - this includes "not answered" in addition to the other statuses.
• Extended Status - CATI only, can be used in hit lists and tables as other variables.
• Last Touched - the dates and times when the respondents last accessed the survey.
• Dropout question - if applicable, this registers the question at which the respondent exited the survey (go to Dropout Question Variable for more information).
• Emails Sent - noOfEmailsSent - the number of emails that have been sent.
• Mailing Status - from the email delivery report.
• Mailing Status Date - a date/time stamp for the last SmtpStatus value. This allows you to link the last mailing status value with the date/time it was returned. This variable can be used as a filter.

In addition, you can drag into the table coded questions from the questionnaire that are defined as background variables.

Using 1000 Separator

Check this box if you wish the report tables to use a separator in numbers with more than three digits. The separator used will be that defined by your computer’s national settings. Default is Unchecked (do not use separator).

Rounding of Values in Expressions

This setting controls whether or not the data cell values used in calculations in expressions for conditional formatting and formulas are rounded. The options in the drop-down list are:

• Default - for conditional formatting, rounded data cell values will be used in calculations. For formulas, exact data cell values will be used in calculations.
• Rounded - rounded data cell values will be used in calculations, both for conditional formatting and formulas.
• Exact - exact data cell values will be used in calculations, both for conditional formatting and formulas.

Statistics Base

Some questions in the survey may not be answered by some respondents. This may be because the question has been set up as “not required” and the respondent has moved to the next page without having provided an answer, perhaps the respondent did not answer the entire questionnaire (incomplete or screened), or the questionnaire could have been set up with skip patterns so that certain respondents did not see all the questions. By default the percentages are calculated using the Exclude not answered setting, thereby basing the results only on those respondents who have answered the question. However, if you wish to include in the base the respondents who have not answered the question, set this to Include not answered.

This setting is usually used in combination with including “Not answered” on the header variable(s) (go to Include Not Answered for more information).

Row Nesting

When you have several elements in the Rows dimension of a table (either because you stack or nest several variables in rows or because you have a multi-level variable such as a grid question in Rows), you can choose how you want the titles and subtitles to appear.

• The titles and subtitles can be displayed as separate lines, as shown in the table below. For this layout, set Row Nesting to Separate Lines.

Figure 1 - Row nesting: "Separate lines"

• The titles and subtitles can be displayed beside each other, as shown in the table below. For this layout, set Row Nesting to Beside each other. Note that the two tables use the same row, column and data dimension variables.

Figure 2 - Row nesting: "Beside each other"

Data Dimension Target

This property setting applies only when you have more than one item in the "Data" dimension of the table (i.e. more than one element dragged into the cell in the upper-left corner of the table designer). When you have more than one item in the Data dimension (go to Data Dimension for more information), the values for those variables will be nested with their accompanying titles. The Data Dimension Target property specifies whether those values are to be nested under the columns or the rows.

When you set Data Dimension Target to Left, the values will be nested under the variables in rows .

Figure 3 - Data Dimension Target set to Left

When you set Data Dimension Target to Top, the values will be nested under the variables in columns .

Figure 4 - Data Dimension Target set to Top

Filters

You can select a filter to apply for the entire aggregated table. Available filters are those listed in the filter toolbox (go to Filter Designer Overview for more information).

Any filters applied to a table will be listed in the Filters row at the bottom of the table and in the Fixed Filters row in the table information area below the table. Filters that are inherited by the table from higher up in the report, for example from the page or from the report itself, will be specified as such in the Filters row. In the event the list of filters is too long to be displayed in its entirety, place the mouse pointer over the list to display it in full.

To add a filter to the table using the table properties sheet:

1. Double-click on the table to open the table Properties sheet.
2. On the General tab, click the ellipses button (...) beside the Filters property.

The Report Filters window opens . All the filters that are available to the report are listed in the Available Items column. Any filters that are already applied to the table are listed in the Selected items column.



Figure 5 - The Report Filters dialog

3. Select a filter in the Available Items column and click the >> button to move it to the Selected Items column .

In the event you have a large number of filters available, you can search for the required filter using the functionality in the Find area.



Selecting a filter



Figure 6 - The selected filter

4. Click OK to close the window, then click Apply or Apply and Close in the properties page to apply the filter to the table.

The selected filter(s) are listed in the Fixed Filters field and the Drop filters or answers here row below the table .

Figure 7 - The filter listed in the Fixed Filters field

Note: You can also drag filters and questions directly from the Filters toolbox and drop them into the Fixed Filters field or the Drop filters... row (go to Adding a Filter to the Table for more information).

Filters to Exclude

You can disable inherited filters. Click the ... button to open the Report Filters page, which lists all inherited filters, and select the inherited filters you want to exclude. On completion, save the changes.

Personalized Filter Status

This option defines whether and how the Personalized filter affects the table. You can switch the personalized filter on and. If you select "Default" on Report Page or Report Folder level, it will inherit the setting from the level above (a component belongs to a page, a page belongs to a folder, which may belong to a report, or may be nested inside one or more folders which themselves belong to a report).

Save as Style

The properties available in the Table Property Sheet are the same as those in the “Aggregated Table Style”, which is accessed through the Layout and Styles toolbox.

You can apply local modifications to the current style. Any changes you make to the property sheet of one table will apply only to that table, whereas any changes you make to the style will affect all tables using that style.

You may have several aggregated table styles to choose from, depending on the template your report is based on. You can also create your own styles. To save a table as a style:

1. Click Save as Style in the Table Designer toolbar.

The Table Style Properties dialog opens .



Figure 8 - The Table Style Properties dialog

2. To save the style as a new style, type a name for the style into the field.
3. If you have applied conditional formatting to the table and you wish to include that formatting in the new style, check the Include Conditional Formatting box.

Note: This box only appears if conditional formatting has been applied to the table.

4. To update the current style, check the Update Current Style box.
5. Click OK to complete the procedure or Cancel to close the dialog and return to the Table Designer page.

Note: You must be in the Table Designer for the Save as Style button to be available.

You can override local property changes set on the table by reverting the table to the style settings. To do this:

• Right-click on the table in the Report toolbox and select Revert Aggregated Table to Style.

Render Content as HTML

When this option is checked, then the special characters (for example, currency signs or copyright symbol) in the table content will be rendered as HTML (for example, '&euro' wil be rendered as '€'). This affects only view and preview; it does not affect exports.

Dataset ID

You may wish to display several versions of the same table on a page, using different rows or columns for each table. You can use this layout for example to show the top 10 answers in one table and the bottom 10 in another. To improve performance on the page, you can assign the same Dataset ID to both these tables. This will avoid Reportal having to calculate the results more than once, thus making the page load faster. This feature should be used with caution however, as it will give errors if the tables are not identical except for the content filtering. If you leave the Dataset ID empty (default), the table calculations will be performed as normal.

Weight Model

Weight models must be defined in Forsta Authoring before they can be applied to elements in the report. The drop-down in this property contains a list of the weight models defined for the survey on which this report is based. Select the required weight model from the list and save the change to apply the model to the table.

Refer to Weighting in the Forsta Professional Authoring documentation for further information on creating weight models.

Note that questions that reside within loops cannot be used in weight models.

Note: Only Single variables with Normal answer lists can be used for the Sampling and Cell Matching weight models. If the user changes the type of a variable or answer list that has been used in one of these weight models to one that is not supported, then this variable will be removed from the weight model when the weight model task is run.

Weight models can be used in multi-project data sources.

Aggregation level

Specify an explicit hierarchy level for table calculation.

Include Records without Children

When reporting on one-to-many relations (e.g. survey loops, or a Forsta Plus Hub containing a contact database with multiple survey records per contact), there may arise instances where some records at the parent level have no associated child data (e.g. no loop records, or a record in the contact database with no associated surveys). As an example, calculations of the average of count (number of loop records) will then differ depending on whether or not such records are included. By default, records without associated data on the lower level will not be included in the calculations. The inclusion of such records will lead to reduced performance and is therefore not recommended if the total number of records is high.

Object URL

This property only appears for an object in a report page that is specified as being a Public report (go to Report Properties Overview for more information).

The Object URL property allows specified objects (tables, charts and gauges) to be viewed individually via a direct URL, without having to open the report. This allows the possibility to embed a table, chart or gauge in other web pages, for example web portals or intranets.

Once a report has been published as Public, then this property becomes visible in the property sheets of the table, chart and gauge objects in that report. Go to the property sheet of a particular object and select the Object URL property to display a further field containing a URL to the object.

Copy the URL displayed in the field, and paste it into the desired web page. The object will then be visible in that web page.

Name

You can set up several aggregated tables in a report page. If you have more than one table on a report page, you may wish to assign names to the different tables in the Report toolbox to simplify identification for when you wish to perform a process such as building a chart based on one of the tables. The name you assign in the Name field will be used in the tree in the Report toolbox .

Figure 9 - Aggregated tables with names "Table 1" and "Table 2"

Hidden

A chart is always based on an Aggregated Table. However in some cases you may not want to show the table itself in the report. Check the Hidden box to hide the Aggregated Table in the report page.