Upcoming Deprecation of New Survey Triggers [Q1 2021] | XM Community
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We have been busy improving and innovating the Actions tab so that it can act as a hub of all the workflows in your projects. With the introduction of the Email Task to meet the needs of the Email Trigger, the XM Directory Task to meet the needs of a Contact List Trigger, and the Salesforce Workflow Rule Event and Salesforce Task to replace Salesforce triggers, we will be working towards phasing out Triggers.

Deprecation of New Triggers


Deprecation of Triggers WarningStarting January 18, 2021, you will not be able to create new triggers, and will instead see the message displayed above. We advise you to use the corresponding features in the Actions tab instead of triggers. 
You will still have access to existing triggers, and be able to edit them as needed.

Actions vs. Triggers


Overall, the Actions tab gives you more flexibility regarding the types of events that can lead to the creation of emails and contact lists, and also offers more tasks and integrations that can result from a survey response being submitted. However, the Email Task and XM Directory Task also have specific improvements over their respective predecessors.
Improvements the Email Task has over Email Triggers:
  • Pull in library messages (and thus translations) for subject lines and messages.

  • Better response reports, with more capabilities.

  • Greater brand admin control over valid email domains.

  • Action Reporting for troubleshooting why an email did not send.

Improvements the XM Directory Task has over Contact List Triggers:
  • Specify transactional data.

  • Integration with survey distributions.

See Salesforce Best Practices for a summary of improvements the Actions tab offers over the the Tools menu setup.

Eventual Deprecation of Existing Triggers


The soonest we will start phasing out existing triggers is currently undetermined. Leading up to this time, it is important to start migrating existing triggers that your workflow relies on to the Actions tab.

Moving Older Triggers to the Actions Tab



Qtip: When adding an Event, you will most likely need to choose Survey Response, and for the response type, select Created.

Qtip: Conditions are not required, but can enhance an experience. For example, we may want to make sure the contact information for a respondent wasn’t left empty before adding them to a contact list.
Workflow Conditions

Qtip: Save messages you want to use in Email Task as General Messages. Save subjects as Email Subjects.
For Salesforce, see the following pages:

Edit: Date of new trigger deprecation moved from January 18, 2021 to Q1 2021; more specific date to come. Estimated date of triggers being phased out entirely is undetermined.

KatharineS
I feel strongly that these triggers should not be deprecated until the Actions Tab has all of the same functionality as the triggers. Earlier this week I tried replacing one of my contact list triggers with the XM Directory action and I learned of 2 things that are missing from actions.

  1. The actions tab does not have an option for unsubscribing someone from a list. Contact list triggers have this option

  2. The XM Directory action only allows me to add new contacts. When I try using it to update the information on an existing contact it does not work and it just adds the person as a new contact.

Both of these things make the XM Directory Task unusable for me. Additionally, I think some more admin permissions are required before triggers go away. I find it frustrating that all users have an option to send via SMS in the XM Directory Trigger even if they don't have the SMS permission turned on. I am told their send will fail, but really they shouldn't ever be given the option. Additionally, the name XM Directory is very confusing to our users since we don't have the XMD. If you intend for this to replace Contact List Triggers it should have the same or a similar name.
I think that all of this needs to be fixed and thoroughly tested before deprecating the Triggers.

uhrxx005 Thank you for raising these concerns! It seems that our team is working on resolving #1 before we deprecate the creation of new triggers, so that the XM Directory Task will have the ability to opt members out from mailing lists by June 8th. I will post here again if we need to adjust those dates.
As for the concern expressed regarding being unable to update contacts, this sounds like it may not be intended functionality - I would advise reaching out directly to support.
We appreciate your feedback regarding the naming and SMS permissions - I'd recommend submitting them to our Product Ideas category!

KatharineS
Regarding my issue with using the action to update the contacts, I called support 8 days ago and that was when they informed me that it does not have the functionality to update contacts, only add new ones. They told me that was the intended functionality and in order to update contacts I would need to use the trigger. This absolutely needs to be fixed if the triggers are going away.
I think it should be the responsibility of Qualtrics to not roll out/deprecate features until they have at least the bare minimum in place when it comes to admin permissions. Qualtrics should not require a user to submit a product idea, convince colleagues to upvote the idea, and hope it gets implemented.
There are a lot of large enterprise Qualtrics accounts who haven't even purchased SMS and are now going to have a lot of users confused as to why they have that option visible.

KatharineS
I agree 100% with uhrxx005 on this. The ability to update contacts must be available before triggers go away. The contact trigger has always had this functionality, so the action isn't a replacement until it has the same functionality.
I also agree that from a communications perspective Qualtrics has muddied the waters when it comes to naming contact list functionality (XM Directory (XMD) and Research Core Contacts (RCC)). First APIs were labeled as RCC or XMD, but some of the XMD APIs apply to both RCC and XMD. Now, the XMD Action is following suit.

TomG uhrxx005 Thank you both so much for your responses. I have raised your concerns about updating contacts, and we are working to close this gap before contact list triggers are deprecated. If necessary, we will push back the deprecation of contact list triggers to allow for this improvement to be introduced to XM Directory tasks. I will communicate here if dates get moved as a result!

KatharineS - Thank you for addressing the issue and for providing an update!

In order to give our teams time to address parity issues, survey trigger deprecation has now been moved back to June 30th, 2020 instead of June 8th.

I've noticed today that while you could add in piped text and multiple emails in the Reply-to field for an email trigger, you can only enter one email for the reply-to in a task.

My qualtrics form is used for student registration overrides as well as students advising. Students submit the form and their submitted data arrives to academic advisor as a triggered email. Based on the email message, advisor gives an override to the student and/or provides an advise via reply to the triggered email.
For each student submission, one email messaged is triggered.
Will I be able to move my entire triggered email setup to  the Actions Tab while preserving its full functionality?
I want to be sure that my existing email trigger will work at least until the end of September, when the Fall student registration will be over.
there are hundreds of students submissions per month



KatharineS - Now that "Update recipient from survey response" has been added to the XMD action I wanted to provide an update on my testing. It doesn't work if the email address is empty (piped in as ${e://Field/RecipientEmail}). The action doesn't update the contact (XM Directory) and doesn't report an error. This is not an issue with Contact Triggers, so the XMD action is still missing the update functionality of Contact Triggers.

Alex_WLU & TomG Those sound like concerns that would be better answered by our support team. You can submit a support ticket here

TomG thanks for testing that. KatharineS, I don't really see how that is a support issue. This functionality is absolutely essential and needs to be working before Triggers are deprecated.
Do you have a more specific time frame for when the triggers will stop working? Late 2020 is very vague and we are trying to plan ahead for our longitudinal projects and projects launching this fall. We cannot afford to have triggers break during data collection.

uhrxx005 Unfortunately we don't have a more specific date at this point in time. However, rest assured, you will be notified when there is a more specific date.

Piping into "Reply-To Email" in "Actions>Tasks" is not supported, but must be supported.
Please communicate this to your engineers. It's not just a "new idea". It is absolutely a "must"

KatharineS ,
I wanted to let you know that using the Actions to add ED to an existing contact is still broken. It successfully adds the ED, but it also removes any ED that already exists for that contact.

Hi uhrxx005! The best way to make sure this information is relayed to our Engineering team is to file a ticket with our Support team. That way they can make sure to triage your issue and get it in a queue to be actioned. You can reach out to them via your Support Portal.

Emily I did relay this info to support. I really hope they fix this before the triggers are deprecated

Is this message supposed to be showing up when one tries to create new triggers now? It does not and it was not until I sent a problem with a trigger email to support that I found out they are being phased out.

It would be really helpful to have known this was happening before today, when Support's response was "Unfortunately, because Email Triggers are in the process of being deprecated, we cannot troubleshoot this issue further." and send the link to this Community post as our "solution"



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KatharineS Emily
I just tried to transition my triggers to Actions for a project and ran into another limitation of the Actions tab. The XM Directory Action does not work if anonymize responses is turned on. Contact List Triggers do not have this issue.
This is a critical limitation that really needs to be fixed before triggers are fully deprecated. I have contacted support about this but they are telling me this is intended functionality. I was under the impression that Actions would at least have the same features/functionality as triggers but that is clearly not the case. We work with a lot of anonymous projects and we absolutely need this functionality. I'm sure others do as well.

Hi uhrxx005! I'll be reaching out to you via direct message to gather a bit more information about this. Thanks!

https://www.qualtrics.com/community/discussion/comment/25334#Comment_25334Thank you for sharing #2 - SM Directory action for updates to existing contacts not working as expected. I am building out the SFDC integration - Triggering and emailing surveys using the Actions & Tasks feature, and have hit a snag with this issue of not being able to update existing contacts. I have reached out to support for assistance in this regard. Glad I read this discussion chain.

TomG Have you had a chance to test the concerns we raised on this thread to see if they are fixed. It looks like they plan to go ahead with the deprecation on 1/18. I have been on leave the last 3 months so I haven't had a chance to confirm that these missing features are now working but I plan to try to test them next week if you haven't already.

https://www.qualtrics.com/community/discussion/comment/33139#Comment_33139I have not tested them lately. Last time was about 2 months ago and they hadn't been fixed.

https://www.qualtrics.com/community/discussion/comment/33142#Comment_33142After email triggers feature has been deprecated, will an existing email trigger continue working? I hope I can keep my existing email trigger indefinitely. Is it the correct assumption?

My qualtrics form for student advising heavily relies on the email trigger. I do not see how I can replicate the same functionality without email trigger

LaurenK It appears that the Triggers were never deprecated. Is there a new date for when they will be deprecated?
Thanks!

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