Ingenious Group

Testcraft Version 7‘s Surprise Feature Tweet

Posted on Monday, August 8, 2011 by Curt Rogers

I can fondly remember, as a child, rifling through a freshly opened box of cereal just to get to the toy surprise buried inside. After all, it was the reason I chose the cereal in the first place. The flavor was of little consequence. The box could have read “Super Sugary Spoiled Meat Flakes” and I would have gladly told my mother it was “my favorite” for nothing more than the prize inside the box. Then again, I always had to promise to eat the whole box, and subsequently did.

Today, I want to tell you about the “Toy Surprise” inside Testcraft 7, called Text Placeholders.

First, let’s start with a brief description, then I will tell you what it all means in greater detail.

Text Place Holders allow you to place dynamic text anywhere within questions, answer choices, instructional text, field labels, and buttons. This means you can place a “tag” that Testcraft will dynamically replace for each respondent, based upon information they provide when entering an assessment. This dynamic text is based upon either the information respondents provide at login or the information that exists in their email invitation profile.

Note: Respondent information can be entered in many different ways. For example, they can self-register when they enter an assessment, you can send their registration automatically from a website or Learning Management System (LMS), or you can pre-register or upload their information in a respondent email invitation profile. Refer to the Integration Guide and the section on Custom Fields in the Authoring Guide for more details.

The Text Placeholder Tags you can use are as follows:

[FNAME] - represents the first name of the respondent
[LNAME] - represents the last name of the respondent
[EMAIL] - represents the email address of the respondent
[CUST1] - represents the custom field 1 (if used)
[CUST2] - represents the custom field 2 (if used)
[CUST3] - represents the custom field 3 (if used)
[CUST4] - represents the custom field 4 (if used)
[CUST5] - represents the custom field 5 (if used)
[CUST6] - represents the custom field 6 (if used)
[CUST7] - represents the custom field 7 (if used)
[CUST8] - represents the custom field 8 (if used)
[CUST9] - represents the custom field 9 (if used)
[CUST10] - represents the custom field 10 (if used)

How it Works

Once a respondent has logged into an assessment, Testcraft looks for placeholder tags within question text, answer choices, instructional text, field labels, and buttons. It then replaces the located tags with respondent information from the custom login fields you have chosen.

Note: Since Testcraft does not force you to use any respondent field, even the First Name, Last Name and Email address, be sure to only use the Text Placeholder tags that you require or use for your respondents. Also note, that when delivering an Anonymous assessment without collecting custom fields, such as a survey, there will be no placeholders for Testcraft to use.

Let’s look at a few examples:

Let’s say a respondent named “Paul Abelton” takes a brief e-learning survey. If we have a question that uses the [FNAME] placeholder tag within the question, as shown below:

This is what the question looks like to the author in the question editor:

Adding Text Placeholders whe authoring a question.

This is what the question looks like when “Paul” is taking an assessment:

The same Text Placeholder as above, as the respondent sees it.

This works within questions, question, answer choices, question groups, instructions and even in the Agree / Disagree text (for those of you that use that feature). I’ve used it in a few places below just to give you an idea of how it works.

This image shows an example of Text Placeholders used in the question group heading, the question itself and as changed within the Assessment Language Editor.

But Wait .... That’s Not All!

For most software architects, it would have been plenty to leave the Text Placeholders feature there. The requirements were met, it works well and is really handy. But, Rob Dugre doesn’t stop at the simple destination, he needs to take it the extra mile and this case is no different than any other.

As most of you know, Testcraft has a feature called “Edit Assessment Language”. This feature allows you to edit the text for every button label and text on the respondent screens (in any language Testcraft supports). Text Placeholders work there as well.

If you notice on the previous image, in the upper left corner it shows “Paul’s Assessment”. That was a change I made in the using the Edit Assessment language screen.

Note of Caution: You can certainly use Text Placeholders within the Edit Assessment Language screen but there are a couple of caveats to be aware of.

The Assessment Language Editor changes the screen text and button labels for the entire Testcraft account you are working within. It will affect every assessment within that account. If you want to use different assessment language, or the default language, simply create another Testcraft account using the Sub-Account Manager.
Since Text Placeholders rely on the Respondent Login information, Testcraft can only replace placeholder tags “after” the respondent has advanced to the Login Confirmation screen. For example, if you change the “Get Help with this Screen” button label using a Text Placeholder tag, it will only take effect starting with the Beginning Instructions screen. Any previous screens will show the tag itself (for example, “[FNAME]”).
Be aware of screen spacing. Using a placeholder tag that is too long may change the spacing of your screen elements in an undesirable way. The key is to test it out first, and see what it will look like. You can always go back and make changes.

Since this is an advanced topic and may generate some additional questions and discussions, please post your comments in the forums here