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Deactivate single personalized survey links


chackbusch
QPN Level 5 ●●●●●
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We need a way to invalidate specific survey links, such as when a customer has been invited by mistake. In such cases, it is essential that the customer cannot use the survey link, as this could lead to reporting inaccuracies caused by data that should not have been collected in the first place.

It is important to note that we do not want to deactivate the entire survey project or stop the response collection altogether. Instead, we only want to deactivate individual links.

Currently, we manage this issue using one of the following manual methods:

  1. Waiting for Expiration: We wait until the survey link naturally expires, then manually check whether a response has been submitted by the relevant customer. If a response exists, we delete it from the reporting.

  2. Manual Completion and Deletion: Alternatively, we quickly complete the survey ourselves and immediately delete the resulting data.

We are looking for a way to automate this process. After reviewing the available APIs, one potential solution could involve initiating a survey session and then deleting it without saving the data. This process could be based on the distribution and recipient ID. But what if the session was already started? How to get the session ID?

Ideally, we would like to use the personalized survey link itself as input. However, the link only contains the Q_DL parameter, which does not seem sufficient to initiate the API process.

Q_DL: This distribution link element is what links the response to the contact list. It is formatted by the distribution id, survey id, and contact lookup id.

Is there any feasible way to automate the deactivation of individual survey links using the available APIs or other methods? Any guidance would be greatly appreciated.

3 replies

MatthewM
Level 6 ●●●●●●
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  • Level 6 ●●●●●●
  • 1069 replies
  • March 14, 2025

Hi. This isn’t necessarily an automated solution, but, if the links are associated with contacts in an email list, you could deactivate the links by removing them from the email list. The survey link will no longer be valid, and a message like the one in the second screen shot below will be displayed if someone tries to access the survey link. Hope this helps!

View of “Remove from list” function in email list.

 

Error message for deactivated survey link

 


chackbusch
QPN Level 5 ●●●●●
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  • Author
  • QPN Level 5 ●●●●●
  • 414 replies
  • March 14, 2025

@MatthewM Thank you, good idea which I was not aware of. However, I think we would require some redesign as we integrate Qualtrics with our marketing solution and use the same mailing list for all campaigns. This means that the same mailing list can be used for the same customer with different surveys. It’s quite unlikely that there are two active surveys within the same timeframe for the same customer, however, it could be and removing the contact from the mailing list would result in all survey links of that customer being invalidated. We would first need to establish different mailing lists, at least one per survey. 


MatthewM
Level 6 ●●●●●●
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  • Level 6 ●●●●●●
  • 1069 replies
  • March 14, 2025

Understood. In that case, it might be possible to use Samples of the original list, while keeping them at 100% so all the samples are identical to each other and the original list. Use a different Sample for each survey, but if a contact needs to be removed, that can be done within the specific Sample without it affecting their presence in the other samples or the original email list.


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