We use LimeSurvey at the University of Twente for staff and student's research projects. Overall, we're very pleased with the options and performance of LimeSurvey (as are the users), but this has lead to a new problem; managing surveys is becoming a burden.

The main problem is that we're required by law ("wet bescherming persoonsgegevens" in the Netherlands, there are equivalent regulations on EU and probably national levels) to keep track of personal data our users collect, and adequately protect the sensitive data that has been collected. This also means that we have to have an overview of what data users actually collect, and stop them from collecting sensitive data that they shouldn't be collecting.

Currently, the only way to do this is to create a survey for new users, and then give them only limited access to it. Once they are done creating the survey, we could then activate it. This works for a smaller number of surveys, but as the number of users grows, this procedure becomes cumbersome and very unorganized.

I can think of two solutions;
* Creating more granular permissions, where we can have users in a 'content creator' role who can create but not activate surveys, and users in a 'reviewer' role who can activate said surveys. User morr has made the same request 9 months ago, forum post here and feature request here . However I do not see any progress on this, nor any further posts/requests.
* Expanding the remote control functionality to allow creating users and setting their permissions, with which we can then build a custom app to handle the above functionality.

I feel like this is an issue that many organization that use LS with many users will struggle with, especially with an eye on data protection laws. I'm wondering if there are other (custom) solutions out there, or if I'm possibly missing something completely obvious?

I would suggest that this functionality would significantly improve the appeal of LimeSurvey for large-scale deployment. As far as the University of Twente is concerned, this would be a huge time-saver, and we would be willing to donate/pay for, and/or cooperate in the development of such an enhancement.

Kind regards,
Karel Kroeze.
IGS DataLab / University of Twente.

Hi Karel, please contact our team lead Carsten Schmitz directly about paying for this or assisting with development - (carsten[dot]schmitz[at]limesurvey[dot]org)

Hello,
I've already faced this problem and waiting for a buid-in function, I've used the following workaround without any major issue... (only beware when updating)

in: /application/helpers/admin/activate_helper.php

Starting the file with:
...Original file content goes here

Ending with:
The result is that only a 'superadmin' can activate a survey.
The admin of a survey can only desactivate (alert displayed or redirection) or check (previouly) if the survey is valid for activation.