Metadata Manager

Overview

The Metadata Database Manager allows users to create and edit databases associated with your survey(s). This association is made by means of the Metadata Filter and Metadata Store survey question types. Be sure to familiarize yourself with these questions types before utilizing a metadatabase in your surveys. A thorough understanding of how the Metasurvey question type works is critical when using a metadatabase.

Metadata Filter

The Metadata Filter question type provides a way to filter the rows of a metadatabase from within a survey. A Metadata Filter question allows you to choose a column from your metadatabase to apply a filter to. When the end user takes this survey, the value entered for the Metadata Filter question type will be the value the metadatabase is filtered on when the question is processed.

Example:

Assume you have the following metadatabase (represented as CSV):

“userID”,“FirstName”,“LastName”,“FavoriteColor”
“1”,“Dennis”,“Seidenberg”,“blue”
“2”,“Adam”,“McQuaid”,“red”
“3”,“Zdeno”,“Chara”,“black”
“4”,“Dougie”,“Hamilton”,“green”
“5”,“Tory”,“Krug”,“blue”
“6”,“Kevan”,“Miller”,“orange”

The Metadata Filter question type in the survey filters results on the “FavoriteColor” column.

What happens when a user takes the survey and enters the value “blue” for this Metadata Filter question?

Insight searches the metadata column “FavoriteColor” for the value “blue” and keeps the rows that have “blue” in the “FavoriteColor” column.

Based on the metadatabase in the example, the Metadata Filter matches the following rows:

“1”,“Dennis”,“Seidenberg”,“blue”
“5”,“Tory”,“Krug”,“blue”

Subsequent Metadata Filter questions that come after the “FavoriteColor” filter question will filter on the matched data set that resulted from the first “FavoriteColor” filter question.

For example, add another Metadata Filter question to the example survey after the “FavoriteColor” filter question that filters on the “LastName” column.

When the end user entered a value of “blue” for the first Metadata Filter question type, the question returned the following matches:

“1”,“Dennis”,“Seidenberg”,“blue”
“5”,“Tory”,“Krug”,“blue”

The same end user then enters a value of “Krug” for the second Metadata Filter question that filters on the “LastName” column. The filtered results at this point match both Metadata Filter questions. Therefore, the filter returned every row that contains a “FavoriteColor” value of “blue” and a “LastName” value of “Krug”. Based on these parameters, these Metadata Filter questions return a single row.

“5”,“Tory”,“Krug”,“blue”

You can only filter on each column once. For example, an attempt to filter the above results on “FavoriteColor” again, this time with a value of “red” would return no matches because there is no row that contains both a “LastName” value of “Krug” and a “FavoriteColor” value of “red.”

Note: When taking a survey over the phone it is only possible to filter on numeric data. End users cannot speak a phrase and match it to the metadatabase. Non-numeric values must be associated with a numeric ID that can be used to match the metadata.

Filtered metadata results can be used further with the Metadata Store question type.

Metadata Store

The Metadata Store question type stores the column values for any rows matched in your Metadata Filter question types.

This example uses the above example to demonstrate how to store column values from previously filtered and matched metadata rows.

Begin with the same metadatabase:

“userID”,“FirstName”,“LastName”,“FavoriteColor”
“1”,“Dennis”,“Seidenberg”,“blue”
“2”,“Adam”,“McQuaid”,“red”
“3”,“Zdeno”,“Chara”,“black”
“4”,“Dougie”,“Hamilton”,“green”
“5”,“Tory”,“Krug”,“blue”
“6”,“Kevan”,“Miller”,“orange”

Add a Metadata Filter on the “FavoriteColor” column with the end user selecting “blue” as their answer.

“1”,“Dennis”,“Seidenberg”,“blue”
“5”,“Tory”,“Krug”,“blue”

To store some values from the matched metadata rows add a Metadata Store question to your survey.

When adding a Metadata Store question type, you need to specify which metadatabase column you wish to store as the question's answer. For example, assume you chose to store the “userID” column.

Note: Be sure to place the Metadata Store question after the Metadata Filter questions in your survey. To be effective, it is necessary to filter the metadatabase before storing values from it.

With a Metadata Store question created to store values from the “UserID” column, Insight stores the following values as the answer to the Metadata Store question, based on the matched rows:

“1”,“5”

This is how you filter a metadatabase on columns using the Metadata Filter question type and then store the column values from the matched rows using the Metadata Store question type.