Embedded data in URLs not being collected, e.g. Q_Language | XM Community
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As anyone ever come across an issue where embedded data in URLs is not being collected properly?

 

 

I have created personal links, but they are being sent to a panel provider so we don’t know who the recipients will be at the point of creation so we add country, language, and id parameters to the URL rather than including this data at link creation.

 

But they don’t seem to be working? Here I have specified:

 

Q_Language=DE

 

But the survey still shows in English. And though  I can’t show it here with screenshots, the user_id is needed for redirects upon completion but when I arrive at the redirect URL user_id is blank so it has not been collected.

 

All of my embedded data fields are at the very top of mysurvey flow and match exactly (i.e. case and spelling).

 

I notice that if I remove Q_DL=… from the URL then the error mesage does show in the language specified so is it possible that this value has been corrupted somehow? And if it is something to do with Q_DL then can I be sure the issue is restricted to a single distribution, or might it affect other surveys? This also hasn’t affected all of our surveys either.

 

We don’t see the issue with anonymous links but we would much prefer personal links to be absolutely sure of preventing multiple submissions.

 

I have contacted Support but had no update so thought I would check if anyone else has seen this before and knew how to fix it.

 

Thanks!

Ensure, translation is working. May be translation could be an issue.

​@jbk  thanks, yes we do have translations working and added to our survey. We see some instances where we create links with the parameters and the language is showing correctly. The issue resolves when the Q_DL parameter and value is removed. Is that required for personal links? I guess it is if it is added at the time of link creation?

 

 

Great that you found the solution yourself. Personal links has same functionality has individual links.

So, add only necessary parameters so that issue like this wont occur.

but the Q_DL parameter is automatically generated and appended by Qualtrics and I thought it was used to link survey response to contacts so if we remove that then we lose this functionality. And why would this auto generated field be broken?

Hi ​@jb_lumanity,

When Q_DL is present, Qualtrics prioritizes embedded data pulled from the contact list (i.e., mailing list fields) over what’s passed in the URL. So, even though you’re appending Q_Language=AB or user_id=xyz manually in the URL, Qualtrics will ignore those unless the same fields are defined and populated in the contact list itself.

That’s why removing Q_DL makes your URL parameters work again—it tells Qualtrics to stop looking for embedded data in the contact list and instead use what’s in the URL.

So to avoid losing functionality:
    •    Keep Q_DL in the URL (for mapping responses).
    •    But also make sure the contact list contains Q_Language, user_id, etc. as fields with corresponding values.
    •    And in your Survey Flow, define those fields in the Embedded Data block above your first question to ensure they’re captured.

Hope this helps!
-- Rochak

​@rochak_khandelwal thank you for the explanation on the Q_DL variable!. I hadn’t uploaded my contacts with country, language, or id variables and some links with this variable are behaving as expected so it still feels like there is still a piece of the puzzle missing … 

When I uploaded my contacts I provided just provided an email (with placeholder/dummy values since the links were shared with a 3rd party to distribute) and a unique id to help link responses to contacts should something like this happen. And within the same contact list we have some contacts with a full Q_URL value and some with data missing

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