Happy New Year everyone! As we enter 2024, we hope you are looking forward to a positive year ahead. That’s certainly the case for us here at NIPO, where we never stop looking for ways to make Nfield even better aligned with users’ needs.
While we’re hard at work improving our products and developing new features, we thought this would be a good moment to reflect on the changes Nfield underwent during 2023. The 24 releases made over the course of the past year included the following major developments:
Automatic Clean-Up: to streamline data management
Keeping your Nfield domain clean – by deleting outdated surveys to avoid unnecessary data storage – is vital for your GDPR compliance, security, and efficient operation. Helping you achieve this is all part of our responsibility within Nfield’s ISO 27001:2013 certification.
To make it as simple as possible, we introduced an automatic survey clean-up feature. You can learn all about it in our 30-minute webinar Academy #39 Automatic clean-up feature session recording.
Maintaining a clean, clutter-free domain promotes internal collaboration and enhances teamwork. Doing this will also help you keep in line with Nfield’s acceptable use policy, making it less likely that you’ll incur additional charges from exceeding storage limits.
Survey Blueprints: for faster survey set up
When you’re creating a new survey with the same configuration as one you’ve done before, starting again from scratch is a real waste of time, right? That’s why we introduced blueprints, which let you quickly set up new surveys based on identical channels and quota frames, without having to manually enter the details all over again. Pretty much like a template.
Thanks to blueprints, you no longer need to hold on to old surveys as setup references. Find out how to benefit from the efficiency of blueprints in our 22-minute webinar Academy #40 – Survey blueprints.
CAPI Fieldwork Progress Report and Repository: a streamlined data delivery pipeline
You wanted a more integrated and streamlined data management experience. We responded by developing a way to transmit CAPI data directly into the Nfield data delivery pipeline, enabling instant availability of comprehensive fieldwork progress reports.
This is still a work in progress, but Beta access is now open for integrating CAPI survey data into fieldwork progress reports and repositories.
Enhanced ODIN Developer: optimizing scripting efficiency
Scripting continues to evolve, and so do our tools for checking your scripts are free from logic errors. The NIPO ODIN Developer now incorporates both the legacy (NFS) parser and the new (Nfield) parser for ODIN questionnaire scripts. At the time of writing, both parsers are currently available, but the legacy parser will be phased out during 2024.
While developing the new Nfield parser, we discovered several commands and constructs that are no longer functional in Nfield. To help you transition to updated practices, these commands and constructs are now proactively reported as warnings.
Additional CAPI capability in Nfield Manager: further streamlining survey management
To make your CAPI survey experience even better, we enhanced Nfield Manager capabilities to enable truly seamless management, including for surveys with Sampling Points, Addresses, and Quotas. Day-to-day survey management is now even more streamlined via a more intuitive interface, and includes added support for Excel upload. As a result, the Nfield Manager lets you do more in one place, without having to use separate tools. So you get to enjoy even more convenience, efficiency and user-friendliness. This latest evolution of the Nfield Manager has led to retirement of the Classic Manager.
Nfield Status Page: providing real-time service insights
We know how frustrating it can be when you’re experiencing performance or availability issues and you don’t know if anything is being done to address them. That’s why we introduced our Nfield Status Page to provide real-time information about availability of our main services across different regions. Through this page, you can easily check whether the issue you’re encountering is already known to our team before deciding to raise a support ticket. It’s all part of our commitment to giving you the smoothest and most efficient service possible.
New Nfield API EndPoints: helping you accomplish tasks with even greater efficiency
In 2023, we gave our users a gleaming new toolbox for streamlining the process of Nfield domain configuration. Nfield API Endpoints v2 is a set of meticulously crafted tools, such as DomainEmailSettings, DomainLanguageTranslations, and DomainPasswordSettings, designed to make your work faster, smoother, and better overall.
APIs (Application Programming Interfaces) act as a bridge connecting two completely different programs (e.g. Nfield and CRM / Nfield and Membership database / Nfield and your reporting system. See API – What researchers need to know for further explanation.
With the release of this updated toolbox, the older v1 endpoints have been deprecated, as indicated in the Nfield API help page.
On to 2024, and beyond
Our improvement journey is continual, and Nfield customers can look ahead to yet more innovations aimed at further enhancing the user experience and data collection efficiency.
For every visible change, a significant amount of hardening, performance improvement, security enhancements, and maintenance work also goes on behind the scenes. It all adds up to fulfilling our commitment to delivering a robust and reliable platform for every single one of our valued customers.
Here’s to an exciting, inquisitive, and productive year ahead in market research!
