Panels

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FeedbackServer provides us with an extensive set of features to manage a panel of external entities eg: contacts, business partners, students etc ... The advantages of a panel is that you can have a centralized set of data that you can then reuse for reporting, survey distribution or filtering without duplicating your information.

 

Instead of having to ask each time your customer for the same information (eg: name, country, age etc..) you can centralize all this information once for all in a panel, create the corresponding panelists and then just attach surveys to the panel. Its even possible afterward to analyze and aggregate survey results with the panel information of the panelists who took the survey.

 

Each panel is composed of a set of attributes that you can define in order to create your panelists structure. As attributes are based on the standard FeedbackServer answer types we can reuse any existing answer type (fields, dates, countries ...) we have registered in FeedbackServer and thus we have a great flexibility on how our panelist data structure will look like.

 

Panelists Entries

Not only does FeedbackServer offer you a way to manually enter your panelists but FeedbackServer goes a step further by allowing you to "import" existing sets of data from external sources through the concept of Panel Connectors. A panel connector is a plugin that will handle the synchronization between an external data store and a Feedback Server® panel.

 

As you can see below panels can be created from many different existing contacts data stores.
 

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Out of the box FeedbackServer comes with following panel connectors.

 

  1. FeedbackServer Connector.
    This is the default built in connector. Its allows you to create, update, delete panelists on a panel without having to own or to connect to an external data store other that the Feedback Server® data store.
  2. Microsoft SQL Connector
    Using this connector we can connect our panel to any table available in any of our SQL Server databases. This connector supports read and updates from its data store.
  3. Active Directory Connector  
    Using this connector we can connect our panel to our centralized domain controller and synchronies our panel with the users available in our active directory network. This connector supports read and updates from its data store.
  4. SalesForce.com Connector     
    Using this connector we can connect our panel to our SalesForce.com contacts and leads database. This connector supports read, updates and creation from its data store.

 

Using Feedback Server's API its also very easy to implement a new connector if you have a third party data store that is currently not supported out of the box.

 

The Rosetta Stone

How many times did we have incomplete information in our data store about customers ? How many times did we try to find out back this information through lengthy phone calls, emails that get never answers ? Why didn't our customer purchase anything since the last six month ?

 

Having information in our data store is very good but having it up to date and knowing over time how our customers act or react about our products is even better.

 

FeedbackServer offers an easy way to handle these issues by offering the concept of Linked Panel Questions. Using a linked panel question we can present information we have about a customer directly to the customer by linking a panel to a survey.

 

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As you can see above the customer just see a very easy to use form with his current information, if our customer sees an error in his information he can just correct and it and we will get directly the change and best of all we can even ask him as few extra questions along the way.

 

Through the concept of panel views we can create small segments of panelists based on rules and send only surveys to these segments letting us effectively target the right persons for which we require information.

 

 

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