what is the best way to send survey or poll once a year

Question

I have a requirement to send an online survey/poll/feedback form to all the users in our intranet once a year. I have been advised that this might require creating an infopath form and completed forms being stored in sharepoint list. I don't very much like infopath route.

Can someone suggest a simpler solution. Please advice/correct.

• For triggering once a year email with link to survey - use a workflow or timer job
• For the actual survey form that saves response to sharepoint list - use a custom webpart

Answer 1

Create a list with Survey type and configure it to behave and look how you want it. I have found the survey form does a pretty good job out of the box for standard surveys.

You can create a scheduled task to run yearly which will send an email to your distribution list with the link to the survey form.

To get a bit more complex, you could create a survey template you want each year, then have the scheduled task run a powershell script to create a new survey list from the template. This would allow you to have a separate survey list for each year if required.

Answer 2

The sharepoint list containing the survey will have a column "ows_Created" with the date the survey was added.

Create a webpart that checks the date when the user submitted last time the survey and the current date. If it's a year or more, then redirect them to the survey page to fill it again.

Answer 3

I would lean towards a PowerShell script that can create the survey you want and send notification emails and then schedule that using Windows Tasks. OR you could create a timer job and go overboard, but a simple scheduled task should work fine.