Since release 11.4, we have introduced a new exporter in our platform which runs faster and more efficient than legacy exporters, provides an easier UI, and allows more configurations when building the exporter.
In this article we aim to address potential concerns, explain the reason behind this functional transition in our product and highlight its benefits.
What has changed?
When Exporting any survey and selecting the relevant Exporter you might see two Default Exporter options. One indicated with a NEW and one with an OLD label.
The same applies if you go to the Exporters List, you will see a mix of OLD and NEW exporters, plus a new option we recently added “Default (Emulate Default Legacy exporter)” - more on that later.
When you create a new Exporter you need to be conscious of which type you want to create. We strongly recommend not to use the Legacy Exporter, and instead to take advantage of the new exporter's speed.
If any Exports are still run using the OLD exporter, you will need to switch off the Show Only New Exports option under Export Queue, in order to see a complete list of all exporters (old and new)
We want to make it as clear as possible to you as the user which exporter you are working with and to understand any challenges you might have to move away from the Legacy exporter.
So why did we upgrade the exporter?
Our product occasionally requires a revamp in certain modules by updating them to a latest and optimised technology in the backend in order to bring more stability and performance to the end user.
PERFORMANCE: The new exporter we’ve delivered is built on a more advanced engine for better performance and faster exports. New exporters run 100x faster than the legacy exporter, which means that export queries finish their job quicker.
DATA ENRICHMENT: We were asked by several clients to add the Classifier Results and Recoded Variables to the exports. This made us rethink the whole exporter process and consider other possibilities for enriching the exported data. And this is what we’ve provided now. Not only Classifier Results, but also Lemmas, Case Alert flag, Query Tags, Recoded Variables and NPS Segments, all to support your diverse analytic projects beyond the sandsiv+ platform.
ADDITIONAL EXPORT TYPES: The Legacy exporter only supports CSV and XLS as export types. Now we offer additionally XLSX and JSON.
ADDITIONAL STATES: The new exporter is reflecting recent product improvements related to internal survey states, therefore you will see more options in the Status dropdown. This includes Blacklisted, Quarantined and Invite not Delivered
FILTER BY DATE: Invitation Date is also now available in the new exporter as a way to filter the respective survey and export
DATE AND TIME FORMATTING: With the new exporter you can define exactly how you would like to export your DATE and TIME fields
LINE BREAKS: Line breaks in Excel and Exports have caused many of us headaches. Therefore the new exporter has an option whereby you can choose to remove line breaks (and replace them with a space) to prevent breaking of the exported file.
What will I see that’s different
Statuses: The OLD EXPORTER had the status "Extracted" status, which is now gone.
Column Order: The column order of the exports is now different due to the different underlying process. For clients whose target system (eg Data Warehouse) imports depend on the previous column order can then use the “Default (Emulate Default Legacy exporter)” instead, which is a NEW exporter type but imitates the structure of the OLD exporter.
Response Date: In the OLD Exporter we had Response Date. This is now renamed to End Date to match the name of the data columns.
What do I need to do
In order to make use of the new exporter you need to do 2 things:
- Create any necessary New Exporters with the custom settings that you need (eg date formats, statuses to include, metadata enrichment).
- Update your existing Export Schedules to use the new Exporter
What is the "Default (Emulate Legacy Exporter)"?
This exporter type (introduced in 11.14) functions as a solution for users who wish to migrate any default legacy exporters and keep the same configurations, columns and column order. This export type seeks to keep the export file you used previously in legacy exporters whilst taking advantage of the new exporter.
Summary of Changes
| Property | Legacy exporter | New Exporter |
| Architecture | Using the database from Feedback module (very slow) | Using the data from the analytical modules, optimised for retrieval |
| Filter by Date | Created, Started, Response | Created, Started, Response + Invitation Date |
| File Type | CSV/XLS | CSV, XLS, XLSX, JSON |
| Customisable Date and Time format | X |  |
| Enrichment of export with metadata such as classification results, NPS Segments, Lemmas, Recoded Variables, Query Labels, Case Alert indicator |
X | |
| Easy reference of System Attributes in Type dropdown when working with Custom exporters | X | |
| New Statuses available | Invite not Delivered, Quarantined, Blacklisted |
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