Anonymous link --> unique link after starting survey | XM Community
Question

Anonymous link --> unique link after starting survey

  • 13 July 2021
  • 5 replies
  • 416 views
R

I have a situation where I need to distribute an anonymous survey link by publishing it on a project website but would like the respondents to be able to come back and complete their survey later. The survey will be fairly complex and I expect many won't finish in one session. I know that “Allow respondents to finish later” is an option but I suspect some respondents will not come back on the same browser (ie. they may open the anonymous link on a mobile device but wish to finish on a desktop PC).
Ideally, I would like to set up something like this:

  1. Distribute the survey via anonymous survey link

  2. Ask for name & email address on the first page of the survey

  3. Use that email address in an email trigger that sends a unique link to the respondent

  4. Respondent can use that unique link to come back and finish their survey later

If this is not possible are there any workarounds that could accomplish the same goal?

5 replies

C
Rank
Badge +7

You almost described it entirely yourself. With the response in progress, you should be able to fetch a session/response ID via piped text that you can use to build your own retake link.
The question is how to trigger an action that sends out the e-mail if the respondent hasn't finished yet. Shooting from the hip, I would say let users enter their contact data first thing and then set a very brief time-out before the response closes. If you put a condition on the action trigger, it also fires for timed-out responses (without a condition, it only works for responses that users finish regularly, i.e., on the last page). I don't think you can trigger the action via the survey flow while the response is still in progress—a Web Service might do the trick here, but this requires additional resources, of course.
By the way, there are two downsides to using a retake link that should be considered: (1) It can increase the amount of auditable responses. (2) It can become a bit quirky because, at least in my experience, retake links can lead to multiple retake responses. But maybe this was due to our use case (we never really found out and more or less dismissed it in the end).

R

After some tinkering I think I have a solution worked out.
The survey is split into two (or more) blocks. The first block simply asks for name and (validated) email address. The actual questions are on the remaining block(s).
In the Survey Flow, first embedded data Q_URL is added at the very top. Then after the first block, a branch is created with logic 

If Q_URL Does Not Contain Q_R
then
End of Survey
. The first time someone enters the survey using the anonymous link they will hit this End of Survey element.
At that point there is an email trigger that sends an email to the respondent, using piped data to build the retake link. When the person uses that link they will bypass the End of Survey element because Q_URL will now contain Q_R data and now they can complete the remaining questions.
From the documentation it seems like you may have multiple retake responses if you don't build &Q_R_DEL=1 onto the link.

R
Rank
Userlevel 1
Badge +2

Reviving this thread:

I am trying to use the logic from @robpitingolo comment but the branch logic does not seem to work for me. It always goes to the first branch as if it doesn’t execute the condition.

I thought I had everything set up correctly, and when I print the values, I can see that I am using the correct environment variables and that Q_R is getting passed in correctly to update the Q_URL. (note that everytime you re-visit the ‘re-take’ link it creates a new response ID)

Any thoughts? Here are some screenshots for context:


 

A
Rank
Userlevel 6
Badge +14

You could also try using an authenticator. You would use an anonymous link still, but users would have to enter a password and/or username to log in to take the survey, but this should save their place if they decide to complete it later. 

The username/password could be any embedded data field that you have on file for users, such as an ID number, zip code, first name, last name, etc. 

https://www.qualtrics.com/support/survey-platform/survey-module/survey-flow/advanced-elements/authenticator/authenticator-overview/

Nam Nguyen
Rank
Userlevel 7
Badge +20

(note that everytime you re-visit the ‘re-take’ link it creates a new response ID)


 

(note that everytime you re-visit the ‘re-take’ link it creates a new response ID)
That’s why your 1st condition will always pop & 2nd condition is not been met. Retake Q_URL will have the old ResponseID but Q_R will be the new retake ID (its Reserved and you can’t set it’s value, there are alot of metadata field and it’s complicated). The solution is to avoid them.

The solution is to check for the link Q_URL containment of “Q_R=”(as a character, not the field that holding value) to identify the original link or the retake one.

-Nam Nguyen-

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