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Embedding Contact List Data Into Survey Results Without Including Data in Actual Survey

  • 28 March 2018
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Does anyone know of a way to attach information to survey responses (which show in the back-end recorded survey responses) from a contact list where the survey itself does not include the information from that contact list? I work at an education organization and want to attach our internal school IDs to school names selected from a survey in the end survey results, but do not want our survey takers to see the IDs in the actual survey (which would not make sense to them). Survey takers log-in to the survey by selecting the school they work at and then answering several questions about their school. Attaching school ID to survey results would help us connect finished survey responses to other data sources much easier. Has anyone found any workarounds in this area? Are there any methods that are similar that could get at this issue?
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Best answer by bstrahin 28 March 2018, 21:29

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I'm not sure this is the best solution so other Qualtrics wizards if you have a better answer I would love to know!

The only way that I could get this to link a survey answer up to your contact list was to use an authenticator and to make it work smoother I had to create two surveys and do a little changing to the Contact List that I wasn't expecting...

Contact List
* Add employee name as you want it to appear in the drop down list to the variable "External Data Reference"

Survey 1 used to select the employee
One question only, drop down list with names from "External Data Reference" copied as the options
* Survey Flow
1. Show your question block
2. Next block - Set Embedded Data
- Variable name "Answer"
- Value "${q://QID1/ChoiceGroup/SelectedChoices}" (or whatever your question ID is for the drop down list)
3. Next block - End of Survey element
- Choose customize
- Check Override Survey Options
- Choose Redirect to URL, paste the anonymous link to your second survey here and tack the following on to the end "?Name=${e://Field/Answer}"

Survey 2 connects to the contact list and where you would have all of your questions
* Survey Flow:
1. Authenticator
- Authentication Type = Contact
- Authenticate Using Contact = select your contact list
- Authentication Fields = External Data Reference, "Employee", Check prefill option, in the next box type "Name"
2. Next block is indented under the authenticator
- Set Embedded Data, Choose Add From Contacts, Find your contacts list and choose okay
3. The rest of your blocks can be after this and will then pull in the contact list data connected to the record


While this is clunky the prefill option means that your respondent won't actually see the authenticator. They may have a slight delay as the surveys pass the correct information to each other.
Userlevel 7
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You can still embed the data fields in your Survey Flow to have values attach to the completed survey record. Just because you assign it as an Embedded Data Field in the survey flow does not mean that it ever has to be seen by the survey taker. It will only show to them if you call the variable in your survey editor.

If you aren't comfortable with this field being in the survey flow when it is live, you can always go back and add embedded data fields to the flow after the survey has completed and I've seen Qualtrics update the record. As long as the ID and school name are in the same contact list that is either referenced by an individual link or through survey authentication it should have no trouble making this connection for you.
Userlevel 7
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@tanguay87 - What @bstrahin said is 100% accurate. My company attaches 30+ fields to use for analysis that the survey taker never sees.

If the concern is that the value will exist in a URL string, then you could program an API call to attach the embedded data _after_ the survey is completed... but this is technical and not really necessary in most cases.

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