Messages consist of text that can be shown to respondents when they take a survey. The Messages interface allows to specifies and customize this text for all the languages that apply to a survey.

The interface for survey messages is available from the Survey list.

When a new survey is created, default messages for the survey are created. Default messages are available for language English (US) and French (FR). For other languages, default messages are not available. If a message is not available for a combination of survey and language, the system will present the English version of the message to respondents when they take the survey.

Note that messages are copied with the survey when a survey is copied through the copy tool. Therefore, an efficient means to define messages for a survey-language combination is to make a copy of a prior survey for which the messages are defined.

Message for each language

Each message is shown in the preferred language for the user. The preferred language is specified in the Login page and can also be changed in the User profile page.

The message can be defined for each of the languages for the survey.

Message categories

Message are organized in the following categories:

• Questions

• Error messages

• Miscellaneous

• Demographic information

Place holders in messages

Some message contains special place holders. The place holders will be replaced with computed values when a respondent respond to the survey. These place holders are shown as an integer in braces (e.g., {0}).

When a message contains a place holder, the place holder must be defined for all languages for the survey. If a place holder is altered or missing for a language, Novi Survey will not allow saving the messages.

HTML markup

Some messages contain line break as HTML markup (i.e., <br/>). Although Novi Survey will allow removal of line breaks in messages, it is recommended that line breaks are preserved for all languages.