Survey Emulator

 

Overview

Overview

The Survey Emulator is a convenient way to test your survey while developing it in the Survey Designer.

The emulator provides a preview of how questions will appear and behave during an interview, allowing you to test survey flow, scripts, validation rules, and other logic without deploying the survey to a device.

Although the emulator closely resembles the survey experience, its appearance may not exactly match the actual display on the Android app or PC Survey. For this reason, it should be used primarily for development and functional testing.

Before deploying a survey to production, it is recommended to perform final testing on the target data collection platform (Android or PC Survey) to verify the user interface, behavior, and overall survey experience.

Emulator Views

PC Preview

Emulates the PC Survey interface. Between the available emulator views, this is the one most commonly used because it offers a larger and more convenient environment for testing survey behavior.

 

Mobile Preview 

Emulates the view on a general mobile devices, however it is less commonly used.

 

Running the Emulator

For starting the emulator from the beginning of the survey you can click the ‘Run In Emulator’ button.

You can right click any question and choose: “Start Question in Emulator”

This opens the emulator and starts the survey at the selected question.

This is a convenient way to test a specific section of the survey without having to run through the entire questionnaire from the beginning, making development and debugging faster and more efficient.

Useful Tip

If you need to test a specific question that depends on answers collected earlier in the survey, you do not have to run the entire survey from the beginning each time.

Instead, you can temporarily modify the question's scripts or rules to simplify testing. For example, if the question has an Entrance Rule that depends on previous answers, you can temporarily disable or remove the rule so that the question is displayed directly during testing.

After you have completed your testing and verified the behavior, restore the original scripts and rules before deploying the survey.

This approach can significantly speed up development and debugging, especially when working with complex survey logic.

 

The Emulator Interface

The Survey Emulator includes several features designed to help you test, navigate, and debug your survey during development.

1. Emulator Settings

The Settings tab allows you to configure how the emulator behaves during testing.

Available options include:

• Enable or disable the collection of test interviews.

• Choose whether the emulator should apply your survey's configured quotas.

2. Main Viewport

The Main Viewport displays the current survey page exactly as it appears in the emulator, allowing you to interact with the questions during testing.

3. Survey Controls

The emulator includes the same controls available in the PC Survey application, enabling you to perform common survey actions such as:

• Cancel

• Stop

• Save

• View Attachments

• Change Language

• And other survey-related actions

4. Survey Navigation

The Location Indicator displays the survey structure as a tree.

You can quickly navigate through the survey by:

• Double-clicking a question in the tree.

• Entering a question number using the numeric navigation controls.

This makes it easy to jump directly to specific sections while testing.

5. Navigation Controls

The emulator displays the current page number along with navigation buttons for moving forward and backward through the survey.

6. Survey Name

The survey name is displayed at the top of the emulator window, making it easy to identify the survey currently being tested.

7. Information Tabs

Several tabs provide additional information that is useful during development and debugging.

Log

Displays system activity and internal processing performed by the survey engine while the interview is running.

Trace

Displays output generated by the Trace() function.

The Trace() function is commonly used for debugging and allows you to output variable values, execution flow, or other diagnostic information during survey execution.

Variables

Displays the current values of all global variables that have been created during the interview.

Quotas

Displays the quota currently selected according to the survey's quota logic, allowing you to verify that quota calculations and assignments are working as expected.

Note: If your survey uses the QuotaMgr() functions to identify the least-filled quota, make sure to update the Current and Target quota values in the emulator before testing.

This ensures that quota calculations accurately reflect the scenario you are testing and that the QuotaMgr() functions return the expected results.

Using the Emulator

1. Open the Emulator 
2. Navigate to Emulator - Edit Quota Target
   
3. Change the Current and Target for 1-2 of the quotas
   
   

   When testing, set one quota with more completed interviews than another. Then run the survey and verify that the least-filled quota is the one selected and captured.

Summary

When testing, configure one quota with more completed interviews than another. Run the survey and verify that the interview is assigned to the least-filled quota.