Sign-up instructions
Introduction
A standard Bristol Online Surveys (BOS) account costs £500 plus VAT per annum. This allows you to create as many surveys and account users as you wish. You can upload a logo of your choice and then use this on a survey-by-survey basis. There is no limit on the number of people you survey or their location. We only ask that you notify us if you plan to survey 100,000's or millions of potential respondents!
The standard account also includes unlimited email and telephone support.
The 'Support' section of the Web site provides further information on using BOS, see: http://www.survey.bristol.ac.uk/support/
To access a demonstration account or for further information please contact us using
bos-support@bristol.ac.uk or call on 0117 331 4377.
NB. If you are a member of the University of Bristol please contact us regarding the sign-up procedure and costings.
Please note, these instructions are for creating a new institutional BOS account (or adding cost options to an existing account). If your institution already has a BOS account and you need access to it, please see this FAQ: My organisation has a BOS licence, how can I get a user account?
Required Information for account sign-up
To take out a BOS account please email the following details to bos-support@bristol.ac.uk:
- Your name and email address OR the name and email address of the person who will be set-up as the first BOS user for your account (this person can then create any number of other users). This person will be set up as the Primary Contact for the account and is often the licence holder and the Data Controller for the BOS account on behalf of the institution. The status of Primary Contact can be assigned to another person at a later date.
- The postal address of your institution or organisation. This needs to be the legal address to be included in your licence agreement. We will also need contact and/or invoice postal address(es) if they differ.
- The short name you want to see appear in survey Web addresses (URLs). Your shortname can only contain lowercase letters, numbers and the hyphen character. For example, if you are from the University of Poppleton then you may want to use "poppleton". This would mean your surveys would have a URL of: http://www.survey.bristol.ac.uk/poppleton/surveyname
- A list of the additional cost options you require on your BOS account (if applicable). Further details of these optional extras can be found below.
Next steps?
Once we have received your email we will send you:
- Instructions to help you get started
- A BOS licence agreement
- Details of how to log into your BOS account
We will contact you by email should we need to confirm any details.
Optional extras
The following can be set up after you've started using BOS so you don't have to buy them now.
Web address (URL) customisation
Cost: £100+VAT one-off charge.
Rather than have your survey available at: http://www.survey.bristol.ac.uk/poppleton/surveyname
You can have a URL customised to your organisation, for example: http://www.survey.poppleton.ac.uk/surveyname
Encryption
Cost: £50+VAT one-off charge to cover administration only.
If your survey questions might allow individuals to be identified you should purchase encryption (known as Secure Sockets Layer or SSL). Encryption ensures that third parties cannot intercept the data and users will see a padlock symbol in their browser confirming that access is secure.
NB. We ask you to buy the required SSL certificate as it simplifies the process and keeps your costs lower. Charges vary between suppliers and change over time but should be under £200 for a two-year licence. We prefer clients to buy their own SSL certificates but are happy to advise on this process.
It is also possible to use SSL if you do not customise your URL. In this case you can use an SSL certificate belonging to BOS. There is a £100+VAT one-off charge for this.
Customisation of BOS colours and font
The colours and font used on surveys can be customised to better match any corporate style.
Cost: £300+VAT one-off charge
Please note, because of the need to work with a web designer, this option can take up to 4 weeks to complete.
Fine-grained account security
Cost: £300+VAT per annum.
Within the standard BOS account any user you create can see questions and results of any survey. This cost-option allows administrators and authors to specify:
- Who can see a survey
- Who can use a survey as template
- Who can see full results
- Who can see limited results (free-text responses excluded)
- Who can preview a survey
Administrators can see all surveys but it is possible for a survey author to prevent an administrator seeing actual survey results.
Foreign language settings
Cost: £150+VAT per annum.
Apply foreign language settings to the standard onscreen text and buttons visible to survey respondents. Survey results from different language versions of the same survey can be combined for ease of analysis (surveys must be identical in number of questions and response options to allow combination of results). Languages currently supported: Dutch, French, Gaelic, German, Hungarian, Italian, Polish, Romanian, Spanish and Welsh.
The BOS administration interface remains in English.
Survey access control: Basic
Cost: £150+VAT per annum
Specify usernames and passwords that respondents must enter in order to complete surveys. Optionally include surname, forename and email address of respondents. Respondent details can be removed once a survey has been completed (to preserve respondent anonymity but prevent duplicate responses) or can be stored should you require respondent details as part of the survey result set.
Survey access control: External parameters
Cost: £50+VAT per annum but you must also have basic survey access control
Pass additional values to BOS within the URL for your survey. This allows you to track users from your Web portal, VLE or similar system. For further details see: Passing parameters to a survey using the survey URL or a form
Email alerting
Cost: £100+VAT per annum.
The email alerting cost option enables BOS to send email notifications to a survey contact when respondents complete one or more surveys.
BOS cost calculator
To help you determine the cost of your BOS account please print-out and complete the table below:
| Features | Cost | Charge freq. | Sub-totals |
|---|---|---|---|
| Standard BOS account | £500 | per annum | £500 |
| Optional - Web address customisation* | £100 | one-off | |
| Optional - Encryption on customised URL* (Admin. charge only)*** | £50 | one-off | |
| Optional - Encryption on standard URL | £100 | one-off | |
| Optional - Customisation of colours and font | £300 | one-off | |
| Optional - Finer-grained account security | £300 | per annum | |
| Optional - Foreign language settings | £150 | per annum | |
| Optional - Survey access control: Basic | £150 | per annum | |
| Optional - Survey access control: External parameters** | £50 | per annum | |
| Optional - Email alerting | £100 | per annum | |
| TOTAL (excluding VAT): | £ | ||
* To set-up these optional extras we will need the contact details of a technical person within your organisation - preferably some one who has access to the Domain Name Server (DNS) or is able to contact your ISP to arrange any required changes. This person may need to buy an SSL certificate and configure CNAME or A RECORDs to enable customisation of survey Web addresses. Once you have supplied the name of a contact we can discuss the individual changes with them.
** Requires "Survey access control: Basic"
*** Our administrative charge applies each time a new Certificate Signing Request is generated. We also reserve the right to make an administrative charge to reinstate a custom URL with SSL following a lapse of SSL certificate renewal.
Pre-purchase support
To aid you in your decision as to whether BOS is suitable for your needs, our support staff are happy to answer any queries you have regarding your potential use of BOS which are not answered by the extensive documentation on our support website. We will endeavour to address all your queries but reserve the right to withdraw from discussions should we deem the level of pre-purchase support to have exceeded a reasonable level.
Licence granting
Bristol Online Surveys is a service available to organisations from any sector and to individuals. However, BOS reserves the right to refuse the granting of a licence if it has reasonable cause to believe the account could be operated in such a way as to bring the service in to disrepute or in a way that could degrade the level of BOS service provision for other users.