Exporting your results and data

To look at and analyse your Dialogue response data, or if you need to close your Dialogue site, you may need to extract all or some of the data from it. Here's the list of what you can extract, in what format, and what it includes:

Exporting challenge data

Once logged in as an admin user, select the Administration link at the top right of your screen. You should be taken straight to the Manage Challenges page, but if not, select the Challenges link at the top of the screen.

Select the name of the challenge you want to export data for, this will take you to the challenge dashboard. From here you can generate a summary report, or export all the data from your challenge.

Screenshot showing the portion of the manage challenges dashboard that deals with exports, including option to download a summary report or a spreadsheet of all challenge data.

Summary Report

The summary report is an editable and printable document. It presents ideas, and the comments on them in a format that's easy to read. It's provided in .docx format which is compatible with all common word processing software (such as Microsoft Word).

You can customise the order of the export, and choose to include or exclude ideas that have not passed moderation.

Screenshot showing the summary report page with the available export options including how you'd like the ideas sorted, and when you want to include public-visible content only or include all rejected and awaiting premoderation ideas as well.

Data export

This export provides a complete record of your challenge, in a format suitable for further analysis or processing. It includes details of the challenge itself, the ideas, comments submitted and the topics applied. It is in .xslx format, which can be opened in spreadsheet packages such as Microsoft Excel.

You can choose to export all ideas and comments (the default), or limit this to only those that have passed moderation.

In addition, you can choose to between two formats to export text.

  • An easy to read format, that uses text formatting to replicate the appearance of the content from the website, such as bold or italic text. Due to limits of the .xlsx format, this may not be 100% accurate.
  • A 'raw' format that includes all formatting in a form (HTML) that can be displayed using appropriate software with some processing. However, this may be a little more difficult to read.

Screenshot showing the data export page with the available options, including to either include all ideas or only publicly-visible content, as well as option to export in either a readable format or with html markup.

Exporting Site-wide Data

It is possible to see headline stats and export data across all challenges.

As an admin user, select the site settings link from the admin area.

Image showing the site settings link in the header.

At the bottom of the settings page is a link to View topline stats and export raw site-wide data.

Screenshot showing the portion of the site settings page that links to the site wide export.

This page shows headline stats for the site. The following data sets are available for download in .xlsx format:

  • All ideas (title, description, username of submitter, date, average rating, number of ratings, number of comments, list of tags, moderation state) sorted by either creation date, average rating or number of comments. Each .xlsx file contains the same data and the only difference is how it is sorted, so you only have to download one of these.
  • All comments (includes the idea with which the comment is associated, username of submitter, date, and the comment itself).
  • All topics (tags) (topic name, number of uses).

Screenshot showing the site wide export page with an overview of the all ideas, comments, ratings, and tags across all challenges.

Exporting user data

To get data about who has registered on the site, head to Users in the admin links at the top of your window.

From here you will be able to:

  • Download user list (.xlsx) - this includes username, email, mailing list op-in, and sign up date and time
  • Download full user profiles (.xlsx) - this includes username, email address, mailing list opt-in status as well as any custom demographic information if extra questions have been added to the registration form.

Opening .xlsx files

.xlsx files can be opened in spreadsheet packages such as Microsoft Excel, or databases such as Access®.

Export other content

If you would also like to save web pages ('screenshot') from Dialogue to your desktop, there are several ways to do this. One way you can do this is by viewing the page you want to save and pressing 'CTRL'+'S' on your keyboard.

Alternatively, you can also export your web pages to PDFs, which is easily achieved if you're using Google Chrome as your web browser.

Exporting a PDF in Google Chrome

  1. When you are viewing the page you want to export, select the menu icon to the right of the address bar, then select 'Print'.
  2. You'll then need to change the settings so Chrome creates a PDF instead of sending the document to print.
  3. Select 'Save as PDF' from the options:
  4. Click 'Save' and you'll be asked to specify a location on your hard drive to save the file to.