Creating Views on Surveys is something that does not work out-of-the-box and this functionality is nowhere in the GUI. However, I was able to use a URL "hack" to get this done; one to Create the View and one to Edit it. Then I used Designer 2007 to add certain Columns; the 1 to 10 scale data types would aways be hidden. So I had to use Designer to add them manually in XSLT View. This also gave me an opportunity to add Column Filtering to this data and remove the "#" signs (??) in the data, just leaving the number the User chose in the 1-10 scale for a question. See the bottom of this article, I will detail this in another Post. Also check out Paul's post mentioned at the bottom of this article, Customized views of a SharePoint Survey .

My main requirement here was reporting & SSRS wasn't yet set-up. And a bug in the "Export to Spreadsheet" led me to Views as a solution. The Export function was leaving out the datetime stamps for Created, Modified and similar. I believe a few other key pieces of Metadata. There are also other bits of functionality that are specifically disabled / don't work in Survey Lists. Content Types are not present. Then depending on how Advanced Settings are configured (specifically Read Access and Edit Access), Workflow and Alerts do not work correctly. For example, when you lock the Survey down to "Only their Own" (posts) you will get the error "You cannot create alerts for lists for which users can only read their own items." when you try to set-up Alerts for yourself/your group. With "Only their Own" enabled, Workflow will not function correctly and you will get "Error: {workflow name} failed to start, Workflow canceled: Workflow {workflow name} was canceled by {Username}". Ok, a little off-topic here...on to the View process.

Create a custom View in your Survey:

1. Find the Survey List ID. I usually get this just by Viewing the Source on the Overview.aspx page. Near the top of the source, SharePoint gives you the List feed. Just search on listfeed.aspx. Then get this bit: /SiteDirectory/CS/IT/_layouts/listfeed.aspx?List=6071a4f7%2Db688%2D4e83%2D8895%2De53960bf1a58".
2. Copy a "Create View" URL from another List in the same Site. It should look something like this off a List called "Issue Tracking": http://moss-1/SiteDirectory/CS/IT/_layouts/ViewType.aspx?List=%7B90E98D6F%2D5AF7%2D48E3%2DB3C2%2D9F1D5BAD23B8%7D&Source=http%253A%252F%252Fmoss%252D1%252FSiteDirectory%252FCS%252FIT%252FLists%252FIssue%2520Tracking%252FAllItems%252Easpx
3. Modify the "Create View" URL to add the Survey's ID. Add in your Survey ID, making sure to swap out the URL encoded %7B to "{",left curly bracket and %7D to "}", right curley bracket. This will give you this much: http://moss-1/SiteDirectory/CS/IT/_layouts/ViewType.aspx?List={6071a4f7%2Db688%2D4e83%2D8895%2De53960bf1a58}
4. Modify the "Create View" URL to add the Survey's Source Path. Then you just add the Link to your Surveys "All Responses" View. It would look something like this: http://moss-1/SiteDirectory/CS/IT/Lists/Test%20Views/AllItems.aspx . To complete the "Create View" URl like so: http://moss-1/SiteDirectory/CS/IT/_layouts/ViewType.aspx?List={6071a4f7%2Db688%2D4e83%2D8895%2De53960bf1a58}&Source=http://moss-1/SiteDirectory/CS/IT/Lists/Test%20Views/AllItems.aspx . Don't worry about the lack of URL encoding as this will happen once you go to this URL.
5. Go to the "Create View" URL and choose a View Type. Choose All Responses. Standard View and the others never seems to show enough data.
   
6. Name your View and add Columns for display: From here, it is just standard stuff, although i would recommend selecting almost ALL of the available Columns as a start. 
7. Review your new View (from the View dropdown).
   

Then Editing the View is the same process; you use an "Edit View" URL from the same site on a List. It makes sense to Bookmark/Save these links as I ended up Editing the custom View quite a bit. EDIT: I like Paul's method for Editing the Views, once they are created. See his post on Customized views of a SharePoint Survey . This got me thinking & it seems possible to use Designer to Copy/Rename the All Responses View and then Edit it with the GUI or Designer. 

In my next Post, I will detail how to add Columns in Designer on the View's ASPX page. Essentially, I needed to add the 1-10 question data type columns, massage the data (string manipulation) and turn on Column Filtering. The first step is to open the ASPX page, highlight the ListViewWebPart and Choose 'Convert to XSLT Data View'. More later...

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Posted 04-02-2008 9:19 AM by ggill1970