Tag: choice eliminator 2

Google Forms – Choice Eliminator Lite Add on

Patrick CauleyLeave a comment

Welp that was quick. Not too long ago I wrote about the Choice Eliminator 2 add on for Google Forms. This Add on allows you to put limits on how many times a choice can be made and then it will eliminate that choice from the form. Think about people signing up for appointments, you only want one person at a time – this (in theory) could achieve that.

The bad news is that Choice Eliminator 2 is no longer available 😦

I am not sure the reason and the developers website doesn’t really have any info about it as well. My thought is that Choice Eliminator 2 has been replaced with Choice Eliminator Lite (also made by the same developer). So I thought I’d take a quick look on how that works and whether you can count on it.

Installing the Add-on

This is pretty easy. First, open up a new Google Form (this only works in Google Form, not Docs, Sheets or Gmail). In the top right hand corner you will three dots next to your account icon, click that. A drop down menu will appear and you select Add-ons.

A new window will appear and form here you will srarch for Choice Eliminator Lite. When it comes up click on it.

After you click on it, you can read its description and scroll through its images and more. Most important of all you can click the Install button and this will make the Add-on available to all of your Google Forms. Don’t worry though, it is not active until you start using it with specific forms, so it is not going to mess up anything you’ve already made.

When you install it the first time, it will ask for permission to do some actions. Go ahead and approve those and now you are ready to start using it.

Using Choice Eliminator Lite

Before you start using Choice Eliminator Lite, go ahead and create your form. Here is a sample form I quickly threw together.

Then select the question with the times by just clicking on it and now it is time to start using Choice Eliminator Lite. Go to the Puzzle piecec near the top right hand corner and click on it and then select Choice Eliminator Lite.
A little box will then pop up, click Configure.

Just like Choice Eliminator 2 you will get a Take Note!!! box that pops up. This basically tells you to use drop down menus instead of Multiple Choice questions. More on that later.

When you close it, you will see the editor on the right hand side as its own pop out window.

You have very limited options here. You can either till it to Eliminate Choices or not. I imagine if one choice is selected it will disappear from the form. So, there is no way to assign a limit to each choice, for example if you wanted to allow three choices for my 4:00 meeting, then this Add-on will not work for you.

OK – now that is done, let’s test it out.

Always, always test

The heading says it all. Don’t just trust it is set up and working, always test it out before opening it up to the public.

To test it out I had it loaded the form link in a Chrome browser and then another in Microsoft Edge and finally another in Firefox. I wanted to test how long it would take to remove an option.

The good news is that it is pretty quick to process and remove the option. It only took a few seconds. Even if the someone took a time and another person picked that time, it would return an error for the second person and ask them to pick another time.

On the other hand, if they made the same choice within a second or two, then it is a good chance that it would allow both of those answers through. The only service I’ve ever seen that reliable limits is using the Form Ranger Add-On but that is not as easy to set up.

Conclusion

If you used to use Choice Eliminator 2 because you could allow certain quantities for specific questions, this cannot do that. This will let someone make one choice and that is it. For that purpose it is fine, it works well enough. For something more robust that lets you put different limits on different questions, then you need to use Form Ranger. I made two posts about it (Part 1 and Part 2). It does take a little bit to set up but it will absolutely work.

Episode 204 – Snowplosion

Patrick CauleyLeave a comment

Tony and Patrick are back for another great show. We talk about snow, printers, and a bunch more. Check out the talking show notes below and as always, you can subscribe to us with your favorite podcasting app.

  1. Snow everywhere
    1. Snowdays vs eLearning days
    2. Winter Olympics – Are you watching? Is anyone?
      1. Anal swabs for Covid 19
      2. Government approved hotels
  2. What am I drinking?
    1. https://www.metazoabrewing.com/ – Crocodilian American Pale Ale
    2. Kirkland Sparkling Water – So Adult
  3. Google Forms – Choice Removal and Choice Eliminator 2 Add-ons
    1. https://wp.me/pYzzW-29w
    2. Really popular post last week
    3. Choice Eliminator 2 Google Form Add-on is gone 😦
  4. Printer H#LL – DoS – Windows 11, Next Moves, I miss the Image Runner
    1. Two printers in library
    2. Wireshark
    3. Student had a print job going to an older printer
    4. Problems with WIndows 11 because Papercut hasn’t updated its services
    5. Canon Imagerunner
      1. WiFi enabled printers

Google Forms – Choice Removal and Choice Eliminator 2 Add-ons

Patrick Cauley6 Comments

I saw these both featured on freetech4teachers.com and thought I would try them out. Richard Byrne has a quick description and a handy video on how they work which is nice. You can view that video with this link.

These are both add-ons for Google Forms. They are not stand alone form makers, you have to add and then enable the add-on to make these work and I’ll walk you through and let you know how well they work (or don’t). I figured since the Form Ranger (part 1 & part 2) is a bit involved, then I would check to see if these simpler add-ons work just as well.

Choice Removal

This add-on will remove an option once it has been selected. There is no way to configure it to remove after a certain number has been selected. It is always set to one.

The first thing you need to do is create a Google Form. There are a lot of ways to do this which I won’t get into here and the process is usually pretty easy. Here is what mine looks like:

This is super bare bones and obviously, this will only work with Multiple Choice questions (it might work with a drop down, or checkboxes but I didn’t take the time to explore that).

Now I will get the add-on. To do this click on the three dots that are next to your icon, then select Add-ons from the menu.

A new window will appear – search for Choice Eliminator. Then click on it and go through the install process. It will ask you for permission to use this add-on and then you can go back to your form.

I may have to check out the Choice Limit add-on

Now when you are back on your form, click on the puzzle piece near the top right hand side of the screen and select Choice Removal from the menu.

A tiny little box will appear, click on Configuration to get going.

When you do this a configuration pane will appear on the right side of the screen. Now, before it starts to work you need to click the little arrow next to the question and then turn on the Remove Choices feature.

Now it is nearly ready to go. The last option you may have is to have placeholder text when all of the options have been taken. To get to this click on the three-line menu and select Settings.

Type in whatever text you would like and then be sure to hit the Save button.

It works pretty well.

When testing, I was able to have more than one person select the same time. It happened when two people submitted the form at nearly the same time. It is rare, but I was able to do it. If I waited 15 seconds or longer and then tried to pick the same time, I got this error message:

OK – this worked pretty well. Does it work as well as Form Ranger? Well, if you want to limit only one choice and you’re not expecting a huge onslaught of submissions right away, then yes. Yes, this works fine.

If you need to reset the form, you can do it in the add-on settings. Click RESTORE ALL OPTIONS.

Choice Eliminator 2

This was the other option Richard selected. This one is a little different in that you can set limits. Much like Form Ranger, you can set limits with this add-on. Form Ranger is a bit involved and takes a little bit of time to set up, so can this work just as well? No – the short answer is no, but that may not be a deal breaker for some. Let’s take a look.

To get started, make your Google Form and then install the add-on (the exact same way as above).

Once it is installed, you will activate the Add-on by clicking the puzzle piece and selecting it (just like before).

Again, a little window will appear and you will need to click on Configure to get started.

Again, a configuration panel will appear on the right hand side, but there will be a “Note form the author” (that is a direct quote, please see the screenshot below.

Uhhh-not very reassuring here

OK – so I need to change my multiple choice question to a drop down – got it. I don’t have to retype it, I just change the question type and this is what it looks like now.

Now that is ready, let’s get into the settings from the configuration panel on the right hand side. It will probably be populated with From Responses 1 – leave that alone, then click the arrow next to the question that has the choices you would like to limit and click the box Limit Choices. It will think for a little bit.

Once it is done “Creating” go ahead and click the gear icon. When you do that you will see all the choices for that question and you can add limits to each one.

You will notice a green circular button in the bottom right hand corner. There are some nice options here. You can close the window, restore the choices (if you want to reuse the form), pull questions from the form (maybe you’ve updated it and need to add more limits or add a new question.

OK – lets start testing. Like before, I opened up the form in multiple browsers and tried to break the form. What I wanted to see is will it strictly enforce the limits like Form Ranger. The conclusion is that it is not too bad.

If someone picks the last available choice for a time and another person has the form open at the same time, they can obviously see the time. If there has been some time (5-10 seconds) between the first person hitting the submit button and the other person, they will receive this error.

Not too bad. I was able to consistently get it to break, but I had to be very fast. I think the drop down menu causes a slight delay in a person making the choice giving the form some time to update to see what is available or not.

Conclusion

I didn’t have a lot of hope for these two, but they’re not too bad. Again, I wouldn’t use this for parent/teacher conferences or setting up a sign up sheet for After School Activities where limits really mean something, but if you’re looking for an easy way to set up some office hours and want students to set up their appointments ahead of time – this could work.