Fig Leaf Software developed a dynamic online survey tool featuring a simple tabbed interface to help the stations navigate and complete the survey properly, and a variety of Web-based administrative features to allow NPR to expand and control the survey through a Web browser. The tabbed interface organizes questions around topic areas allowing stations to divide a survey along topic lines and assign topics to subject matter experts within the organization. A separate area of the survey tool allows station managers to view their completion progress for each tab. Since not all questions require answers, the online survey tool provides an interface to allow station managers to notify NPR when their survey is complete. NPR engineers can log in to monitor the completion of each survey. Authorized users can review completed survey results by station, and send questions and comments via email. An engineer may flag an individual response and then complete a form to request clarification of the response. The system automatically saves all flagged questions and comments to a database table. At the conclusion of the review, the engineer can visit the “Status” tab to see all questions and comments made. Once satisfied with the information, the user can send a single email listing all flagged questions and comments to a station. When the station manager Using the same survey interface, an engineer could click a tab to review each question the station’s response to it. The engineer could flag any station response and complete a form to ask for clarification about the response. All the flagged questions and comments for a station were saved to the database. After the review was completed, the engineer could go to the “Status” tab and review the flagged questions and comments made. If satisfied, the engineer could click a button and send one email listing the flagged questions to the station. The station would receive the email, log back in to the survey, and click on the Status tab to view the list of the flagged questions and NPR’s comments to each of its responses. On this tab, the station could clarify the responses to the questions and submit them back to the NPR engineer to review. This review cycle would continue until NPR was satisfied with the station’s responses and flagged none of them for clarification. Through the site administration, an administrator could create and update user accounts for stations, NPR engineers, and other administrators. The site administration also included the ability to add more questions to the survey, define its text, the type of input (text field, drop-down, or radio button), and whether or not a station was required to complete the question. For questions that used drop-down menus or radio buttons, an administrator could enter the choices and change the display order on the page for the user. Site development included database design and development, integration with an existing members database, an upload of existing legacy data that resided in Microsoft Access tables, development of the survey interface and functionality, incorporation of the educational and online help materials, and development of an administrative module.
