On Tuesday, June 27, 2023 @8PM Pacific Time we will be releasing another feature-packed update. ThoughtExchange version 6.7 contains some exciting improvements to new features and some oft-requested tweaks to fan favorites with a major focus on expanding the capabilities of surveys. The software will be unavailable for around 30 minutes while we make the switch, but we promise it’s totally worth it.
New in version 6.7:
Improvements to Surveys
Survey Question Branching
Note: This feature is available in all rooms with access to Classic Surveys. If you do not have access to Classic Surveys, reach out to your ThoughtExchange rep to learn more.
We’re expanding our survey capabilities with Survey Branching. This feature allows leaders to create a custom question path for participants based on their answers to previous survey questions. Hoping to run a survey with a more complex design to gather higher quality data ahead of your next Exchange (or maybe as a follow-up to your last)? We’ve officially got you covered.
Once you’ve added survey questions to your engagement, you can find branching controls in the Settings menu under the heading “Survey Question Branching”. Click here for a full description of how to use survey branching.
Drill Down Questions
Note: This feature is available in all rooms with access to Classic Surveys. If you do not have access to Classic Surveys, reach out to your ThoughtExchange rep to learn more.
Sometimes survey questions are like onions - they have layers. Drill down questions allow leaders to easily create multiple survey questions that require a lot of answers and branching logic simply by uploading a .csv file. To add drill down questions, click the “Add element” button in the Survey Question Branching menu and select “Drill down”.
Use the example file to input your various questions and answers.
Then upload the file to ThoughtExchange and click Import. The software will automatically create your questions (which are editable in the Survey Questions step, as normal) and link them together in your branching flow as a single element.
Drill downs are great for complex organizations where your participants may have roles that are nested some levels into a department, for school districts with long lists of school sites, and for improving accuracy in a participant’s selection from many options.
Share Access to Surveys
We’ve expanded the capabilities of the Results Dashboard for surveys to include the ability to share results with others. Now, just like with Exchanges, all leaders need to do is click the Share button and add the email address of anyone they would like to give view or manage access to the dashboard. An email notification will go to the email addresses that are added letting folks know they can share in all the data-analysis fun.
Comment Box Question Enhancements
In this update we’ve updated comment box survey questions to make analysis easier. We’ve also made it possible to include comment box questions in the survey portion of an Exchange (reach out to your ThoughtExchange rep, if you would like to make use of this new ability).
We’ve also added two new features to comment box type questions:
- The Results Dashboard will automatically generate a word cloud of keywords from comment box responses. This word cloud is editable and any words can be clicked to display the responses containing that word.
Likert Favorability Score
We’ve made it easier to glimpse how participants responded to Likert-type survey questions with the addition of the Favorability Score. Leaders in the Results Dashboard can now select any subset of responses (ex. Agree and Strongly agree) to see the proportion of people who responded in that way. This allows for instant feedback about the level of agreement among participants.
Satisfaction and Favorability Score Comparison Tools (beta)
Note: If you do not have access to this feature, reach out to your ThoughtExchange rep to learn more.
We've added survey question comparison tools that will let leaders see how different demographic groups responded to Likert and Satisfaction questions. Use these tools to compare demographic group's strengths and weaknesses across the topics represented by your questions.
These tools are available for survey-enabled accounts and can be found in the Compare tab of the Results Dashboard.
Leader Tools
Exchange and Survey Permissions on the Leader Role
Since our last update we’ve added a new type of licence that administrators can assign to leaders to expand access to their accounts. For rooms with access to both Exchanges and Surveys, admins can select which types of engagements particular leaders have access to (ir give an individual access to both) using the Admin Settings menu.
Landing Page Improvements
We’ve made some improvements to our new landing page for leaders including the ability to filter Engagements by launch date and type.
Custom Word and Phrase Moderation
Ask and you shall receive! Leaders using our machine moderation feature to flag inappropriate thoughts have asked us for the ability to add custom words and phrases to the filter that tool uses, and now they can. Open the Settings menu in the creation workflow and toggle “Enable machine reporting for custom words or phrases” to ON to add up to 100 words and phrases to the filter for your Exchange (press Enter or comma after each one to move on to the next).
Drag and Drop Theming
Easier theming? Yes, please! New in this release we’ve added drag and drop functionality to theming in the Edit Results tool on the Results Dashboard. Leaders can simply click the checkbox on one or more thoughts (or click and hold on a single thought), then click, drag, and drop into the theme of their choice.
Multi-Theme from a Template
Theme set templates take a lot of the work out of sorting thoughts into meaningful categories. Up until now, templates used theme names and keywords to select the best single theme for each thought, but sometimes that isn’t always the most valuable outcome. Thoughts are complex and sometimes contain multiple ideas that belong in different themes. Now, templates will assign a thought into up to two themes if that thought meets the relevant criteria (again, based on the name of the theme and keywords assigned to it). This will help leaders gain a more nuanced understanding of their results with less manual resorting of thoughts.
New AI-Powered Theme Set
Rooms taking part in our beta program using Microsoft’s OpenAI technology will see a new automatically generated theme set in the Results Dashboards for their Exchanges following this update. The new theme set (called “AI Topics (beta)”) aims to automatically sort thoughts into themes with improved accuracy and specificity, giving leaders a good starting point for digging into their results or creating their own theme sets.
Note: An account administrator needs to haver accepted the OpenAI Terms of Use for a room to have access to this feature.
Export Differences
The Differences tool in the Results Dashboard is a great way to understand things that unite and divide participants in an Exchange. Each Differences analysis sheds more light on quick wins and contentious topics across a community. New in this update, we’ve added an Export button to Differences so leaders can download and share a summary of each topic group wherever they need to.
Switch Engagement Type
Leaders with access to create both Exchanges and Surveys are asked which of the two they would like to work on when they click the “Create” button; but we’ve heard that sometimes needs change partway through the creation process. Now, assuming you have the option to create both, you can change your Exchange into a Survey or your survey into an Exchange in the Settings menu of the creation workflow.
TE Advisor Improvements
TE Advisor is our AI-powered tool that allows leaders to quickly glean insight into their Engagements and plan next steps quickly and easily. In this update we’ve introduced some improvements to this beta feature based on early feedback. We’ve added:
- Survey Question Filters to allow you to narrow down viewpoints shared by a particular demographic or survey question response group.
- Published responses so leaders can share valuable Advisor responses with other leaders in their Results Dashboard (published responses appear in the Article tab of the TE Advisor tool).
- Global and granular categories, which allows leaders to control how many themes Advisor produces from their data (global = fewer, more broad categories, granular = more, specific categories).
- Generate a theme set from categories. Simply click the “Generare theme set” button to create an editable theme set based on the categories Advisor has shown you.
Improvements for Participants
Participant Experience
We’ve made some small changes to the participant experience for Exchanges to remove a common stumbling block and provide more information about thought moderation.
Now, for Exchanges with participation groups enabled, participants will move directly to the next section after selecting their group (they will no longer have to click “Next”). Who doesn’t like fewer clicks?
Also, when a participant has a thought that is removed from an Exchange, they are directed to our participant-facing help article about thought moderation. This provides more information for participants about how and why their thought was removed.
If you have any questions about these or any other features, drop us a line at help@thoughtexchange.com, we’d love to hear from you!
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