SharePoint 2010: What’s New in Surveys

 

Note: the following is for the November 2009 Beta 2. In this release surveys do not have a ribbon in all screens and retain most of the look and feel of 2007.

 

What’s new?

Almost nothing! The exercise of comparing the two versions almost seems a waste of time due to the few changes, but I have had a number of questions from folks hoping for many new features in surveys. Remember this is the beta and the final release may still have changes.

 

No changes:

• Settings, Title, description and navigation
• Audience targeting settings
• Delete this survey
• Save as template
• Manage permissions (new ribbon, but core features are unchanged)
• RSS settings

New, but common to most SharePoint 2010 lists and libraries - while useful in other lists these often do not add value to surveys

• Validation Settings
• Rating Settings
• Metadata navigation settings
• Per-location view settings
• Generate file plan report
• Form settings

Changed, but common to most SharePoint lists and libraries:

• Information management policy settings
• Advanced - Some new wording, and the addition of two new but common items: “Offline Client Availability” and “Dialogs”.

Survey Questions:

• All the old question types are still there
• “Business Data” has been replaced with “External Data”
• New! Managed Metadata

Survey Questions – details…

• “Enforce unique values” – Interesting new option! This is really useful for lists where each item must have a unique value (I.e. each item is for one State and two items for the state is not allowed). This will have limited value for surveys.
  
• “Column Validation”  (only available for Single line of text, Choice, Number, Currency, Date & Time) – used to validate the entered data against a rule (formula) – Example:  “[Amount] > 25” – the formula can reference the current field or any other field in the same item (row / survey response)
  
• Currency now has more currency types…
  
• Lookup
• can now display multiple columns from the lookup list – BUT they are not displayed in the survey or the results (this is really a feature for columns in lists)
• can enforce relational integrity (not of much value to a survey)
  
• Yes/No is just as bad as before! (just a bare checkbox that defaults to Yes)
  
• Person or Group now allows multiple selection (2007 only lets you select a single user)

 

.