Tag Archives: watupro

How Does The Timer Work in WatuPRO?

WatuPRO, the premium version of our WordPress quiz plugin has a timer feature. It’s enabled by a setting in the  Add / Edit Quiz page:

Set time limit of minutes (Leave it blank or enter 0 to not set any time limit.)

When you set anything different than zero, everyone who starts the quiz will see “Start Quiz” button. When started the timer starts running.  Here are several frequently asked questions about the timer and their answers:

Q: What happens when the timer runs out?

A: The user results are automatically submitted. So the questions they already answered will be recorded properly, the other will be marked as unanswered.

Q: What happens if the user refreshes the page from their browser?

A: The timer continues from where they were. No time is lost or added except the few seconds taken for refreshing the page.

Q: What happens if the user closes the browser, their internet connection get lost, power goes down etc?

A: The timer keeps running behind the scene so the time when the user was not online is lost. This is done to prevent cheating of users who can take screenshot of the questions and answer “at home”.

When the user comes back, the timer continues. If all the time ran out, their results are submitted automatically. Such a situation requires that the user have stored their progress via the optional Save button or their progress is automatically stored using the appropriate option (for paginated quizzes). If no progress is stored for a given user and they come back after timer ran out, they will never be able to submit the quiz!

Q: I see some users took hours to complete a quiz that has just 30 minutes time limit! Are they cheating the timer?

No, they are not cheating the timer. As explained above when the user closes the browser and come back later after the time has passed their results are automatically submitted (but only the answers they gave before returning). In such event there was more time from start to end of the test than allowed, but the user did not use that time. The quiz is just showing you this to let you know which users abandoned the tests and then came back later (and how much later) to have it immediately auto-submitted. This information can be useful to help you design the quiz better.

Q: How does it work for non logged in users?

A: The same way as of logged in users except that closing the browser may clear the session and restart the timer. Refreshing the page does not restart the timer – it keeps running from where it was refreshed.

Q: Can users with disabled JavaScript on their browsers cheat the timer?

A: No, they can’t. The start time of their quiz attempt is recorded in the database so even without any javascript they can’t cheat the timer. Results of users who try to cheat the timer this way and exhaust their time will not be accepted. They will remain as “unfinished quiz attempts”.

Q: Is there a place where I can see unfinished quiz attempts?

A: Yes. If there are any quiz attempts that are currently in progress, you will see the following link in your “View results” page (this is the page you get when you click on the “Taken X times” link under “View Results” column on your Quizzes page) :

There are 1 unfinished attempt(s).

You can click on that link to see these attempts and clean them if you wish (be careful, some of these might be of an user currently taking a quiz).

Q: Do search engines index the contents of quizzes with timer?

A: The questions of timed quizzes are hidden before the timer is started. This is to avoid tech-savvy users viewing the questions by using “view source”. For this reason search engines can’t index these questions.

Q: Can I set different timers per each question?

No, the timer is available only per quiz basis. Creating per-question timer is extremely complicated and unlikely to ever happen so please don’t contact us asking about it.

Q: I had a quiz taker complain that their results were submitted blank. How come?

There is a protection against smart savvy users who switch off JavaScript on their browsers to earn more time than allowed. Pity for them, they can’t cheat the timer: time is tracked both on the front-end and the back-end. Users who cheat will have their answers completely wiped.

If you are convinced than honest users may somehow have their answers lost, we recommend setting some pagination (for example one question per page or 10 questions per page etc), and selecting the following option:

Answers that are stored in the system will not be wiped out. This will ensure that even if some odd computer problem occurs (we could never reproduce such case!) a genuine quiz taker will not lose the answers given before the timer ran out. This will work for logged in users.

Q. I changed the timezone settings on my site and someone who was taking a timed quiz got their time increased or decreased

The time when user starts the quiz is recorded accordingly to your server time zone settings to prevent all forms of cheating. So if you change the timezone settings in the middle of a quiz, this will of course affect everyone who has already started it but has not completed it. This is normal and cannot be avoided so simply don’t change the timezone while people are doing timed quizzes. Any quiz attempts that start after the change will be timed correctly.

WatuPRO 4.6

Thanks for the useful customers feedback our WordPress quiz plugin WatuPRO keeps improving. Version 4.6 is out, and here are the most important changes, additions, and improvements:

  • Questions can accept user’s comments / feedback.
  • Single-choice questions can be displayed as drop-down selector instead of radio buttons group.
  • You can now specify custom subject for the submitted quiz notification email.
  • You can filter questions by ID in the Manage Questions page. The question IDs can also be displayed to the user using the variable {{{ID}}}
  • Bridge to MailChimp is now available: https://blog.calendarscripts.info/watupro-bridge-to-mailchimp/
  • The shortcodes that list all quizzes and quizzes in category now have additional optional argument “show_status”. It will allow logged in users to see if every quiz is completed, not started, or in progress.
  • “Show numbered pagination” is now available for all types of quizzes
  • Option to reward the collected positive points only when the whole question is answered correctly. This is useful for multiple-choice questions and is similar to “treat this question as a whole” option from the Intelligence module.
  • Quizzes can now be published also in custom fileds as long as you enter the URL in the new box (more info at https://blog.calendarscripts.info/watupro-quizzes-published-in-custom-fields/)
  • [Intelligence module] You can now sell paid quizzes in bundles. More info at https://blog.calendarscripts.info/watupro-intelligence-module-paid-quiz-bundles/
  • [Intelligence module] Sorting questions can now be used in personality quizzes to allow the user assign different weight to different answers. More information at https://blog.calendarscripts.info/using-sorting-questions-in-personality-quizzes-watupro/
  • [Intelligence module] Added option to mark payment as used after each quiz attempt on paid quizzes. This lets you charge users for every quiz attempt.
  • Stats per category are now available in the Reporting module (num and % answered, unanswered, and correct answers)
  • Added “barebone” plugin for API developers: https://blog.calendarscripts.info/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/watupro-custom.zip
  • Advanced setting option lets you switch off the auto-scrolling on multiple-paged quizzes
  • Automatically store user progress as they go from page to page is now available for all pagination types
  • Added ungrouped quiz leaderboards sorting based on individual attempts (Play plugin)
  • Added %%CATDESC%% variable in the “common category grade output” so you can include the category description when showing category grades.
  • Added user groups information in the list of results on a quiz
  • Added option to hide question numbers so you don’t have to deal with CSS
  • Fixed issues with ordering the categories in %%CATGRADES%%
  • Free bridge for myCRED has been added. Please look here for more information.
  • Fixed memory leak issue

The update has been sent via newsletter to all eligible customers. In case your year of free updates has expired you can renew with 60% discount.

Receiving Grade “None” Or Unexpected Grade [WatuPRO]

This issue is most often caused by:

  • You have not defined grades at all. “Grades” is not the same as score, % correct answer or points. Grades are textual result that you assign to the respondent depending on their performance on the test. For example Passed or Failed; A, B, C, D, F; and so on. If you want to use grades you have to create them first.
  • You have selected “Calculate grades by % correct answers instead of points collected” to calculate grades but your grades are created with points in mind (or vice-versus).
    I.e. if the following is checked, your grades must cover the whole range from 0% correct answers to 100% correct answers:
    grades-by-percent This checkbox is on the General Settings tab in the Add / Edit quiz page. This is a very common mistake so please triple-check it before contacting support.
  • Your grades do not cover the whole range of points or percentages user can collect. If you are using points for grade calculation, make sure that all possible points are covered from the defined grades. If your best grade has 20 points for “to” and the user collects 21 points they will not be assigned any grade (and will receive None). If you are using % correct answers for grade calculation make sure your grades cover the whole range between 0 and 100. Please check the “Watch out the decimals” item below too.
  • Watch out the decimals. If you have one grade A: from 0 to 9 points and another grade B: from 10 to 20 points, and your quiz allows decimal points what happens with user who collected 9.5 points? They’ll get no grade. So the grades in this example should be A: from 1 to 10 points and B: from 10 to 20 points. If they get exactly 10 points they’ll be assigned the higher grade. Note that percentages are rounded to the whole number so if your quiz calculates grades by % and not by points you will not need to worry about this.
  • Using category grades without knowing how they work. Please check this guide.
  • The from – to values of grades should always be entered from the lower to the higher number. This means the lower number goes in the left box “from”, the higher number goes in the right box – “to”. Be careful if you define grades with negative points: -100 is lower than -1 for example. So -100 goes in the “from” box at left, -1 goes in “to” box at right.

Grade calculations are fully tested and work fine. If you are receiving “None” as grade this can be only because of misconfiguration. Use the variables %%POINTS%% and %%PERCENTAGE%% in the “Final Page / Quiz Result” tab to get better idea why none of the defined grades matches the points you collected (or the percentage correct answers).