One of our brand new features which we deployed to DMPonline in April 2020 is the ability to create conditional questions. This feature was requested via our Amsterdam user group meeting in 2019 and we did further consultation and demos at the London user group before rollout.
The benefit of this new functionality is that it allows the administrators to remove certain questions from the template, as well as adding custom email triggers to selected responses. Conditions can be added on any questions with structured answers such as check box, drop downs or radio buttons. You can add a condition on a single option or a combination of responses.
To provide specific examples - administrators could set up conditions around sensitive data or data repositories. You may have a question about whether the research project is creating or using any sensitive data. If not, this could allow you to skip a set of questions that ask for further details. Also, you can set up an email alert on certain answers. For example, you may ask about repositories and have emails to alert your repository manager if a project plans to deposit data.
In order to create conditions, the administrator will first need to have a template with all the questions ready. We need to have the question options saved in the database already to allow you to set conditions on them, and we also need to know what questions appear subsequently in order to present them as options to skip. If you are creating a new template, save all questions first and then set the conditions on them.
As the conditional questions functionality touches on several parts of the data model, we conducted in-depth testing on template editing, publishing and DMP creation and export. This ensures the new function works smoothly for administrators and researchers and is intuitive to use. We have also created new guidance and delivered training on this feature. Check out the new section in the user guide, and the tutorial video.
If you have any feedback do not hesitate to get in touch with us at dmponline@dcc.ac.uk!