Once the Metatude Dialogue Server and the Channel Integration Component(s) are installed, consultants, managers and researchers can define dialogues and manage projects involving stakeholder feedback using the Metatude Dialogue Designer and the Metatude Project Manager.

Metatude Dialogue Server
The Metatude Dialogue Server (MDS) is the central component within the Metatude architecture. This server connects to databases and directories with stakeholder information, communicates with electronic channels, stores and serves dialogues and writes results to a database. On the server resides all the project information and intelligence to manage projects automatically. The server is written in java and available for the following platforms: Windows NT/2000, IBM AIX, HP UX, Sun Solaris and Linux.

Metatude Channel Integration Components
The Metatude Channel Integration Components (MCIC) are components that need to be installed on an electronic channel. This allows the channel to communicate with the central server. The function of the MCIC is to communicate with the server and to translate the dialogue information (that is stored in the media independent format XML) into the specific format of the channel. The results are vice versa translated from the medium specific format into the media independent format. This way new electronic channels can be deployed easily within the Metatude architecture. MCIC's are available for the Apache webserver and Microsoft IIS server.

Metatude Dialogue Designer
The Metatude Dialogue Designer (MDD) is a stand alone windows application to create dialogues. With a simple and intuitive interface any user can learn how to create dialogues and questionnaires in minutes. Many question types are supported like open questions, multiple choice, multiple respons, scale and matrix questions. The dialogues are stored in XML-files that can be processed by the Metatude Dialogue Server. The Metatude Dialogue Designer is free of charge. Even when not using the Metatude software suite, you can use the Dialogue Designer to design, edit, store, print and exchange questionnaires.

Metatude Project Manager
The Metatude Project Manager (MPM) is a Windows application to manage stakeholder feedback projects. The MPM can connect via a TCP/IP network (intranet/internet) to the Metatude Dialogue Server. Once logged on you can connect databases and directories with stakeholders, create targetgroups, assign dialogues to (mulitple) targetgroups and retrieve results in the desired format (CSV, SPSS).