System and Method for Automated Acquisition and Integration of Survey Data

Abstract

According to one aspect of the invention, a dynamic, computer enabled, transformative process includes a plurality of steps, wherein raw data is first detected, flattened, transformed, and mapped to a new set of headers and/or reordered as needed to facilitate a wide variety of survey export formats uploadable to products useful by clients using associated software. According to other aspects, the file detection process automates a historic process of opening files and looking at certain attributes of the file format to confirm that the file is a certain survey from a publisher and handled appropriately after the metadata information is detected from the raw file. File formats are detected using a combination of file attributes and pattern recognition; for example, filenames, the number of sheets in a workbook, and the number of words in workbook might be appropriate file attributes in a particular application.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.