Is it only possible to store and pipe respondent attributes as "embedded data"?

So by answering "yes", are you saying that it is impossible to do what I need? I realize that storing and using respondent attributes is quite possible, which could also be useful for me later. However, that is not my key problem here. I need to store and use choice attributes (e.g., like "owner" or "revenue" for that "Freshworks" company on Crunchbase per my other question that you just answered). Even if I can capture such an attribute as embedded data somehow (via the "Value will be set from Panel or URL"), I still don't see a piping option to then bring this into the "Default Choices" for a Matrix Table.

Yes, should be able to. Can you show me a quick example of question/answer so I can try it myself?

1. First you have to load the embedded data as an answer.


2. Then you need to load that option as the default response

Here is a simplified version of the question I'm looking to do, with a "Constant Sum" "Matrix Table" question type. One column (or perhaps more) would be piped from an external data source as attributes of each choice/statement, and one column would be entered by the respondent.

Do you want the user to be able to change the numbers you are piping in?

1. If you right click in the box you can set the Default Choices.


2. Once you are in the modal you just have to click in the box and set it with your embedded data.

Yes, this is what I need. I would prefer that the piped data could not be edited, so I like how you used a formula to refer to the embedded field. I guess what I did not realize is that you could add an embedded data field like "Revenue" and that it could be linked to a choice and not just a respondent, which the help documentation doesn't cover.
However, are you sure this embedded data would work for choices too, or would the "Revenue" field you added only be linked to the one respondent? So if I wanted the same numbers to show for all respondents, would I have to load this same revenue data to hundreds or even thousands of respondent profiles (e.g. 1,000 companies X 1,000 respondents = 1 million embedded data points to load in advance)? And if so, how could this embedded data ever be retrieved for anonymous respondents that have not yet registered? I ask this because the help files seem to indicate that all embedded data must be attached to a particular respondent/contact.

It will only pull in the embedded data from the contact's fields unless you pass the embedded data via url string.
If you want the same numbers to show for all respondents you don't need embedded data fields at all you would just hard code all of those revenues.

Passing the data via a URL string would likely not work, since there could be well over 1,000 possible choices and likely more than one column of data for each choice. By contrast, URL strings generally have to be under 200 characters per the help documentation. One of the first questions of the survey is for the respondent to pick up to 20 choices/companies to evaluate, but I don't know which ones they will pick in advance. That means I would still have to populate all possible choices via the URL string in advance, which is not feasible.
As for "hard-coding" the values into the "Default Choices" for all respondents, that might work, but is there a way to import these default choices from an external data source when updates need to be made to the survey as more recent values (like last quarters' revenue) become available? It would be better to be able to pipe in the values from embedded data somehow. For example, is it possible to refer to a dummy/admin respondent account to pipe in that account's embedded data to all the other respondent's surveys? I only see the question ID (never a respondent ID) in the Embedded Data sample syntax of the help documentation, so I am guessing the answer is "no". If so, then someone may have to go into all 1,000+ statements X # of columns X updates/yr. via mouse navigation in order to manually change the "Default Choice" numbers for those columns, which would be extremely inefficient compared to a single import for each periodic update.
Also, if hardcoding the data in each cell of the matrix is the only answer, then I think I could no longer use a formula to make it non-editable. Is there another way to make it non-editable? I think I recall something in the help about adding a javascript function to the question to make certain columns/cells non-editable, but my account also doesn't seem to have access to that yet for testing.

MSobotta, can you confirm that the only viable "hard-code" alternative to address this problem in my use case is to create thousands of Embedded Data variables (one for each company choice/statement) and then to manually connect the Default Choice of every cell of the Matrix Table's "read-only" columns to those variables via piping?
There is one other "hard-code" alternative, but that would not be viable for a repeated survey like this. That would involve manually entering the Default Choice values directly into each Matrix Table cell, thereby bypassing the Embedded Data variables. That alternative would not really be viable because this entire manual process would have to be repeated for each new survey, since importing data directly into Default Choices does not appear to be possible. By contrast, by using Embedded Data variables, this cumbersome process would only have be done once. Subsequent updates to the Default Choices could probably be reloaded via an Embedded Data import process.
Unless Qualtrics provides some custom importing or piping functionality that is not in the help documentation, I see no other workaround to this stubborn problem. Do you?

You only get one default choice. I don't know of another way of doing what your are asking, but that doesn't mean someone else doesn't. You are asking quite a lot. The only other thing I could think of is to Export the survey as a QSF, automate/code your choices somehow into the file, and when you are done reupload it.

Is that QSF format even editable? I already looked for a way to export a survey to Word, Excel, HTML or whatever and then reimport it after doing the edits to the Default Choices values. However, I saw nothing in the help documentation for this. My guess is that they are withholding this obviously beneficial export-edit-import functionality to prevent interoperability with other survey platforms. I have a ticket open with Support now on this, so I will ask them about your suggestion. Maybe there is an undocumented way to do it. Thanks again for your help!