Research projects involving multiple parties, different countries and/or high numbers of CAPI field agents present various challenges when it comes to access. How do you give each individual the right permissions for smooth collaboration, without compromising security or creating excessive administration?

Nfield has it all covered via a range of access controls and options. So, you can strike the perfect balance between collaboration, security, privacy and compliance, whatever kind of set up you’re managing.

Live overview only: Fieldwork Progress report

Not all stakeholders need access to a survey’s inner workings. For some, their only interest is staying up to date with progress.

Nfield enables this via the Fieldwork Progress report, a live online overview of survey performance and fieldwork status that includes response counts, quota progress and key metrics.

Benefits include:

• Does not require Nfield login.
• Easy sharing through a secure URL.
• Access can be revoked at any time.

Nfield’s Fieldwork Progress report is suitable for internal stakeholders, clients and external fieldwork partners alike. In many cases, it’s the easiest way to keep multiple parties informed without granting unnecessary access.

Learn more: Real-time knowledge of survey progression: Fieldwork reporting and data repository

Relevance-restricted access: Survey groups and role-based permissions

When external partners need to work inside your Nfield environment, you can maintain control of what they can see and do via a combination of survey groups and role-based permissions.

This duo of Nfield user settings lets you:

• Limit what users can see within your domain (via survey groups).
• Control access so users can only enter the projects they are actively working in (via survey groups).
• Control every user’s permissions based on their role (e.g. scripter / quota manager / supervisor).

Survey groups and role-based permissions are easily configured through the Nfield Manager.

They can be used for both internal and external users to enable collaboration, while maintaining full control over what each individual can know and do within your Nfield domain.

Learn more: See our article on Survey Access Management and Academy #49 – Survey access.

Large numbers of (external) CAPI field workers: Device login

CAPI projects often involve large numbers of field workers, who may rotate in and out of your workforce. Over time, the total number of individuals can easily get out of hand, especially if deploying external agencies.

When this happens, creating separate Nfield accounts for every interviewer can be quite an overhead. But with device login, you don’t have to.

This is because device login lets you configure authorized devices to access relevant surveys directly through the Nfield CAPI app.

It’s a neat solution when working with large fieldwork teams or those provided by external agencies.

Learn more: Academy #59 – Nfield CAPI app logon 

Separation when needed: Additional Nfield domains

There are some situations where granting access to your primary Nfield domain isn’t a satisfactory solution.

For example:

• You need stronger separation between projects.
• Different organizations require independent administration.
• Internal security policies prohibit third-party access.
• Compliance dictates a different domain setup (e.g. with local data storage).

In these cases, Nfield can provide additional (temporary) domains where external partners can manage fieldwork independently.

Benefits include:

• Complete separation from your main domain.
• Independent user administration.
• Separate survey management.
• Improved governance and security.
• Reduced risk of accidental access to unrelated projects.

This setup is particularly valuable for long-running partnerships, multi-company projects, or situations where multiple organizations need operational independence.

Learn more: To request an additional Nfield domain or discuss your requirements, contact [email protected].

Collaborate with ease

Every research project is different, and Nfield offers multiple ways to ease and support both collaboration and compliance for best effect.

Whether you’re coordinating a multi-country study, working with local fieldwork agencies, or partnering with external research companies, Nfield lets you set things up for maximum practicality, security and operational efficiency.

Controlling survey access and permissions is a fundamental operational safeguard. But when your organization is responsible for a large (and growing) number of surveys and users, how do you manage who has access to what, without getting lost in complexity?

How do you keep the crossovers between multiple clients, teams and user roles neatly organized as you balance collaboration and governance?

How do you maintain security around sensitive surveys, without sabotaging operational efficiency?

The environment challenge: to split or not to split?

When the numbers get big, market research organizations are faced with a dilemma about how to organize survey management.

Divide and conquer
Some market research companies opt for creating separate environments for different teams or clients. While this may seem logical, a split setup can also be the enemy of efficiency, resulting in:

• Duplicated administration.
• Fragmented workflows.
• Inconsistent processes.
• Higher operational costs.

One big happy family
Conversely, keeping everything within a single environment exposes a different set of over-visibility challenges, like:

• Users see surveys that don’t concern them.
• Survey lists become too large and difficult to navigate.
• Sensitive client projects require additional oversight.
• There’s a higher risk of accidental changes.

It’s clear that neither solution is optimal. What’s needed is a third way.

Crowd control

Nfield commonly supports multiple teams, departments and client accounts within a single domain. However, in response to the challenge described above, Nfield offers a different structure for managing access.

Nfield’s two-layered survey access management keeps everything in a single, centralized environment, where users can only see manage what is relevant to them. This is achieved via a combination of role-based permissions and Survey groups, which work together to deliver a neat solution to a complex ask. Here’s how it works.

1. Role-based permissions: what users can do

Every user is assigned a role that determines which actions they can perform. For example:

• Domain Administrator – full access across the domain.
• Power User – advanced operational capabilities.
• Regular User – day-to-day survey management.
• Sample Manager – focused on sample management activities.
• Quota Manager – responsible for quota administration.

This ensures each user can do everything they need to, and no more.

2. Survey groups: where users can act

Surveys are organized into groups, and individual users are assigned to those groups. This restricts users to only seeing surveys that are relevant to their projects, clients or teams.

For example:

• Client A surveys can be assigned to one group.
• Client B surveys can be assigned to another.
• Internal research projects (like employee satisfaction surveys) can have their own dedicated group.

Survey lists are kept clean and teams are not distracted by work they’re not involved with.

Easy to manage, easy to scale

Nfield’s two-layer approach to survey access is simple to manage and scales elegantly as volumes increase.

No matter how many (more) clients, surveys, projects or research personnel are in the picture, this enables control without sacrificing flexibility. Operational efficiency is preserved through maintaining a single environment, while sensitive surveys are hidden from prying eyes. Navigation is simplified for everyone, while administrators retain the governance required for enterprise-scale research operations.

How to set up Survey groups

To find out how Survey groups work, watch the Nfield Academy session where our product experts demonstrate how survey visibility and user rights can be managed within Nfield.

Watch the academy session: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4imGrcfrN1w.

Keeping your Nfield data safe is an absolute priority for us. Every conceivable measure is taken to ensure both our team and our software solutions comply with the highest security standards. We would like to invite you to this series of NIPO Academy sessions to share an overview of all efforts towards Nfield security and compliance.

Topics that will be discussed include an overview of security and compliance measures at NIPO, most frequently asked security questions, and we will take a look at the Nfield Trust Center, to see what security resources are available, including a new option to use AI chat to get the security information you need.

Nfield’s Online and CAPI surveys can perform even the most complex tasks with ease. But the more you demand from your surveys, the more places there are for tiny configuration errors to creep in, disrupting your fieldwork’s flow and maybe forcing projects to be paused or restarted. Issues such as routing errors, quota mismatches or reporting issues often only surface once surveys are already underway. Wouldn’t it be better if you could stress-test every survey before going live?

Meet the Nfield Interview Simulator

Nfield’s Interview Simulator enables you to put surveys to the test by running simulated interviews online using the same logic, quotas and sample integrations as real fieldwork. By feeding realistic data into your survey and letting it pass through every stage of the process, you can validate your setup before engaging respondents.

The significance of online simulation

Simulating interviews online is significantly better than running dummy data offline.

Traditional dummy data generation from NIPO ODIN Developer, which runs offline, randomly assigns answers to surveys. While useful for basic checks, this approach does not understand quotas, sample data or online logic — and the resulting data often lacks realism.

The Interview Simulator works differently. Simulated interviews are conducted identically to real online interviews, mimicking what happens when actual respondents provide data which moves all the way through your survey. This ensures far more meaningful validation and realistic test data.

Benefits of interview simulation

Running realistic data through your setup before going live delivers two important benefits:

1. Validating survey setup
Simulated interviews make it easy to verify routing, filtering and quota connections. These can confirm your script is correctly linked to quota variables, labels and logic.

2. Getting ahead of reporting requirements
Reporting increasingly needs to be ready from day one. Simulated interviews reveal realistic expectations of the data your survey is likely to deliver, so you can appropriately configure dashboards, cross tables and exports before fieldwork begins.

What the Interview Simulator can do

With simulated interviews you can:

• Test routing and filtering using actual interview logic.
• Validate quota setups, including least filled.
• Use sample data to test sample-driven survey logic.
• Generate data that feeds directly into Nfield Reporting.
• Download standard output files for external tools.

Spot quota issues before they become fieldwork problems

Quota connection errors are one of the most common reasons for stopping live fieldwork. With the Interview Simulator, quota behavior is immediately visible. If a quota cell does not fill, the issue is often something simple — such as a mismatch between script variables and quota labels.

Identifying these issues before launch helps avoid costly delays and rework.

Use sample data in simulations

Unlike offline dummy data, the Interview Simulator understands sample data. This makes it possible to test surveys where routing or questions depend on values passed in from the sample, such as different paths for different groups.

You can use the sample from the original survey or upload a specific sample just for simulation. If your requested number of simulated interviews exceeds available sample records, the system clearly reports what happened.

Simulate with confidence

The Nfield Interview Simulator helps teams launch fieldwork with confidence. By validating routing, quotas, sample logic and reporting upfront, you reduce risk, save time and avoid unpleasant surprises once fieldwork is live.

To explore how to set up and use this feature in depth, with step-by-step technical guidance and examples, see the Interview Simulator documentation in the Nfield e-learning course. You might also find it useful to watch the corresponding session from Academy #46 – Simulate Interviews to see this feature in action.

After having organized a series of recap session for Nfield Online and CAPI in the last months, we would now like to invite you for a new regular NIPO Academy session, this time the topics are quota enhancements and the Online ODIN Developer.

Quota in Nfield has been covered in previous Academy sessions. As we have added several new features recently, mostly aimed at ease of use, we would like to demonstrate these new options.

After having organized a series of recap session for Nfield Online and CAPI in the last months, we would now like to invite you for a new regular NIPO Academy session, this time the topics are quota enhancements and the Online ODIN Developer.

Earlier this year we released the Online ODIN Developer (see also Academy 69). We are still steadily adding features and in this webinar we will also show what has been added since the first release, plus a new script debugging feature.

After organizing the recap sessions about the current state of Nfield CAPI and Online, we would like to complete the research process, by organizing 2 NIPO Academy sessions on working with (legacy) Nfield data.

The webinars will be about the Nfield data files and data export options, and as such relevant for both Nfield Online and CAPI.

Session content:

• Exporting data
• DSC

After organizing the recap sessions about the current state of Nfield CAPI and Online, we would like to complete the research process, by organizing 2 NIPO Academy sessions on working with (legacy) Nfield data.

The webinars will be about the Nfield data files and data export options, and as such relevant for both Nfield Online and CAPI.

Session content:

• U- and O-files
• Media files
• Paradata
• Audit log

Knowing exactly where your surveys are at, in terms of both completion and responses, is enormously beneficial to your project team.

Nfield enables this via two powerful features:

• Fieldwork Reporting – interactive, shareable reports for live project tracking.
• Data Repository – a continuous data feed into your own reporting and automation environment.

Both of these features are now available in Nfield Online and Nfield CAPI (previously only Nfield Online).

Fieldwork reporting: live visibility for you and your clients

Fieldwork reporting gives project teams immediate insight into what is happening in the field, without having to wait for data processing, file export, or building of custom dashboards.

Reports are generated automatically inside the Nfield Manager using built-in Power BI integration. Live results are visible with an approximate refresh time of 10 minutes after interviews are collected.

What you can monitor

Fieldwork reporting focuses on operational progress and data quality:

This makes it easy to identify routing issues, overly long sections or problematic questions while the study is still running.

Shareable live reports

A key benefit from Nfield’s fieldwork reporting feature is the way it supports transparent collaboration.

• Easy sharing: Generate a shareable link to the report.
• Convenient viewing: Invited third parties can view without logging in.
• Control: You can set an expiration date and revoke access at any time.

This allows you to safely share live progress with clients, internal teams or partners, without giving them access to the Nfield Manager itself.

Controlling what appears in reports

Through the Design/Transformations settings, you can choose which questions fields are included in reports. This enables you to keep reports appropriately focused by excluding irrelevant variables, so stakeholders can interpret them more easily. Because fields are simply excluded from reports rather than being removed, they can be re-instated at any time with minimal effort.

Data repository: your data, continuously delivered

The data repository provides a continuous pipeline that delivers interview data into a dedicated database for your own reporting, dashboards, and automation. Instead of relying on manual exports or batch processes, completed interviews are extracted approximately every 10 minutes and made available in a structured, queryable format. This allows research teams and data specialists to connect BI tools, build custom dashboards, and automate workflows directly on top of Nfield data, significantly reducing technical overhead and speeding up access to real-time insights.

To activate fieldwork reporting and the data repository

Both fieldwork reporting and the data repository are available in Nfield Online. To activate these capabilities for Nfield CAPI, please contact [email protected]. If you would like to see the functionality in action, we recommend watching Academy 24 – Nfield Reporting and Academy 35 – Standard and Custom Reporting. Once enabled, you can immediately start using real-time fieldwork reporting and continuous data delivery for both Online and CAPI projects.

We have started a new series of NIPO Academy sessions about the current state of Nfield Online, to replace a whole string of webinars we did previously and have become outdated. We would like to invite you to the last 2 sessions in this series, about fieldwork management and metrics.

Session content:

• Survey metrics

We have started a new series of NIPO Academy sessions about the current state of Nfield Online, to replace a whole string of webinars we did previously and have become outdated. We would like to invite you to the last 2 sessions in this series, about fieldwork management and metrics.

Session content:

• Pause and resume surveys
• Surveys in waves

A new series of NIPO Academy sessions about the current state of Nfield Online, to replace a whole string of webinars we did previously and have become outdated. We would like to invite you to the first 3 sessions in this series, so you can catch up with all features that Nfield offers for online surveys, from the survey setup, to sample and invitation management, to monitoring projects.

Session content:

• Email invitations

A new series of NIPO Academy sessions about the current state of Nfield Online, to replace a whole string of webinars we did previously and have become outdated. We would like to invite you to the first 3 sessions in this series, so you can catch up with all features that Nfield offers for online surveys, from the survey setup, to sample and invitation management, to monitoring projects.

Session content:

• Monitoring surveys II
• Sample table
• Start interview with respondent key

On February 12, 2026, Reuters reported that Dutch telecom provider Odido had been hacked, with cyber criminals accessing sensitive data from around 6 million customer accounts.

The warning is clear: even large, well-resourced organizations are vulnerable to significant, large-scale cyber-attacks. This has to be a wake-up call to every organization that handles, processes and stores personal data.

What this means for market researchers

Market research is nothing without respondent data. The risks faced by market research companies in the event of a data breach could be catastrophic. From regulatory scrutiny under GDPR and possible financial penalties to reputational damage and loss of trust, everything is at stake.

Even when the data concerned does not include highly sensitive information like bank details, the GDPR still requires market research companies to implement appropriate technical and organizational safeguards.

The good news is that, here at NIPO, we never let our guard down when it comes to the security of our Nfield market research platform. We are fully committed to supporting our customers in meeting the legal obligations which protect both their respondents’ data and their business’ future.

ISO 27001:2022 – strengthened Nfield security

NIPO recently upgraded to ISO 27001:2022 certification – the leading international standard for information security management systems. This certification confirms that NIPO applies:

• A structured, risk-based security framework.
• Strict access controls and governance.
• Continuous monitoring and improvement.

For Nfield users, this provides independent assurance that the platform meets high international security standards.

Essential advice for market researchers

Using Nfield for your market research gives you the reassurance of a highly secure platform. But this is just the start. Maintaining data security is a shared responsibility. Your organization also needs to adopt best practices and put our security enablers to work.

Here’s what you need to do in Nfield to minimize data breach risks.

1. Keep intruders out: enable two-factor authentication (2FA)

Passwords can be compromised. Two-factor authentication adds a second verification step which blocks unauthorized access even if credentials are stolen. Enabling 2FA is one of the most effective ways to prevent attackers from logging into your Nfield domain.

2. Reduce sensitivity: practice data minimization

Restrict the data you collect to only what is absolutely necessary for your research objectives. The less personal data you store, the lower the risk.

As discussed in our GDPR guidance, within Nfield this means:

• Avoiding unnecessary personal variables.
• Defining data retention policies.
• Deleting identifiers once no longer needed.

3. Don’t keep all your eggs in one basket: store identifiers separately

Use the sample table to store personal identifiers instead of embedding them in survey responses.

This allows you to:

• Pseudonymize or anonymize sample data.
• Delete specific fields or interviews.
• Maintain precise control over retained data.

Separation reduces the impact of potential unauthorized access.

4. Minimize exposure: use automatic survey clean-up

The more data you’re storing, the greater the amount of damage in the event of a breach. There’s probably no need to keep hold of surveys that have become inactive. Nfield’s automatic survey clean-up feature deletes expired surveys, thereby keeping your exposure to a minimum. This both improves GDPR compliance and keeps your domain organized.

Clean environments are more secure environments.

Turning lessons into action

The breach affecting Odido is a strong reminder that cyber-attacks are an ever-present threat to organizations of any size.

For market researchers, being trusted to protect respondent data is everything.

Our advice for significantly reducing the risk of data exposure is to:

• Use an ISO 27001:2022 certified platform (such as Nfield).
• Enable Two-Factor Authentication.
• Practice data minimization.
• Store identifiers separately from associated data.
• Make use of automated clean-up.

And remember, security is not a one-time setup. It’s an ongoing discipline.

A new series of NIPO Academy sessions about the current state of Nfield Online, to replace a whole string of webinars we did previously and have become outdated. We would like to invite you to the first 3 sessions in this series, so you can catch up with all features that Nfield offers for online surveys, from the survey setup, to sample and invitation management, to monitoring projects.

Session content:

• Set up survey
• Fieldwork settings
• Monitoring I