Hello,

as a beginer of LimeSurvey I especially asked myself in the very beginning how I can manage or put together the two main components:
1.) my own participants data that have to be enhanced by the survey (7 attributes)
2.) the answers to the questions of a survey.

@participants table:
* Is the participants table used only for a survey with login option? Means, for filtering out special people for this survey?) Important: The login should be a general login for all of them, like user = firstname and lastname. Password: none or free. It is just to set the record pointer of the part.table, right? (I cannot give each participant a special login account!!!)
* Can also unknown users be added, e.g. by a previous registering process?
* And can I use any added/specific attributes of the participants table to be directly filled in by answers of questions? (therefore questions should be linked to those attributes. But I could not find this option yet, unfortunately)
If not, what can/are they (the additional attributes) be used for otherwise??...

So if this is not possible with the part. table (adding answer data to the participants table in real time during the survey) or if it should be a free/open survey I suppose I must not or cannot use a (imported) participants table within LimeSurvey, right?
Is it the 'token table' (not explained in the manual!!) I have to (export and) use alternativly?...

@token table?:
So then adding further attributes to my own participants table (determined by answers of a survey) will be much more circumstancial, right?
What would I have to do then? I suppose the only way is to export the whole survey to e.g. an excel table (by using 'answer & statistics' / 'export results for external applications', right?
I suppose that this export is also necessary for comfortably find out all the statistic data (sorting mechanism of
MS Excel) of the own survey!?
Is this (exported) question table the one you generally call 'token table' in your manual?

And then you have to do the whole merge process manually by synchronising token table and own participants table via the participant name (I do not have email addresses of each of my participants but e.g. address and phone number!), right?
If so, this would be bad. To be honest, I don't know if I will be able to do so (I have 3500..12000 participants!). Or is there a merge tool available anywhere?...

Unfortunately this constellation/handling is not (well) explained in the manual.
So I hope I could describe you a little bit what are my difficulties in general to get familiar with LimeSurvey.
And I hope that you can explain to me what I just suppose, what I cannot find and what I do not understand yet.

Thank you VERY much for these explanations.


PS: Please be aware that there seems to be a bug at the 'import from csv' function of the part.table. There are big import problems with the typeset (ß, ä, ü, etc.) and a semicolon (not a comma!) separator!! (s. my other article)
[but maybe I cannot use the participants table anyway]

Hello all,

I would be VERY happy if there would be a nice person who can explain me what I did not understand above.
Thank you sooo much!

Many greetings from Falk.

I think it is not very clear what you are really looking for. I had written a short post, but it seems it did not appear here.

So you have attributes for your respondents that you would like to reuse in the survey? This is possible with the token table, which is survey specific. Not sure about the participant panel, because I haven't used this yet.

But custom attributes uploaded in the token table can be piped into the survey and also can be exported later together with the survey responses.

Hallo Holch,

you did not understand what problem I mentioned with 'MERGING' my data later on??
What didn't you understand here? I supposed it is very clear explained...

No, I do not have attributes for my responds but I would like to merge/add the responds to my attributes I have (here: participants table)!!

A.) Let's say you have a table of participants (name, mail, etc.) and ask them in the survey which one is smoker. If you do not import your participants table with additional attribute 'smoker' and be able to 'link' it to this question (I could not find any function for that) you have to merge token table and your part.table later on manually.
Not clear?...

Can you show me in the manual where it is described what the additional participants attributes at www.limesurvey.org/manual/Central_partic...base#Import_from_CSV can be used for??...
If not for that what I would need them for!?...

So just have an own short look to find out what I mean and what it is supposed to be, please.
You might not understand me because you never worked/experienced with part.table maybe!...

B.) Next question of me was how registering or login process works exactly. (please s. above once more!)
Do you know?...

C) I doubt if I can use your method of your last sentence above...
Could you please explain to me how...
* custom attributes can be uploaded into the question/token table?
* how they can be piped into the survey?

I have no idea how that should work.

Thanks for your feedback!!

Isn't the merge a totally normal problem when you make a CLOSED survey???
The you always have to merge between your old data and your new survey data.

Which merge tool should be used here?? (I am just googling)
Is there anybody who did that already??...

Anyhow I am looking forward to your description about uploading attributes into the token table and related piping affairs very much!!...

I still don't know what the problem is. You upload your contacts with the attributes to the token table, you run the survey, you export the survey data together with the token attributes and you have one dataset.

Hallo Horch,

please try to read my lines more carefully!!

E.g. I never said that I uploaded my contacts to the token table.
JUST the opposite: I ASKED you how I can do so!! Cause I only know to upload contacts to the LS participants table but NOT to the token table!
There is not any import function for the questions part, is there? Where?? Which one?...

If so, please help me by describing exactly the menu usage flow. I do not understand right now what you are writing to me. It is just different from what I am asking you, Holch.

So please, try to explain again!...
And where can I read about it in the manual? I did not find that...

Remark: Anyhow, always thank you for trying to help me!...

Well, the global participant panel is for all surveys. So if you want to create a list with respondents that might respond to more than one survey then it makes sense to register with the central participant database. I personally do not use it, because we do not want to create a panel, thus the contacts uploaded are always just for one survey.

If you just want to do one or two surveys the token management would be the right thing for you. You can upload the same CSV with custom attributes (this is described here: www.limesurvey.org/manual/Tokens#User-defined_attribute_fields )

This is just a quick response, as I don't have time to read all your long texts again at the moment. If this is not what you are looking for, just ignore. What is possible with the participant panel, I can't tell. I would have to do some tests.

okay, thank you anyway.
I found the manual chapter and I understand why I did not see this function. You have to allow the 'Zugangsschlüssel' what I did not want to do.
Otherwise you have no access to tokens...

I realised that additional attributes in token tables can only be used for conditions (read access only). It does not seem to be possible to couple an attribut and a question attribute - one of my questions.

The other answer stood at the very bottom of that manual chapter: 'Allowing public registration'.
Another question of above.

Okay, I will go on and open a test survey to try all that by my own now. Then I expect to understand it.
Thank you so far, Holch.