I need to build a workflow that sends three reminder emails based on a respondent’s survey completion progress. The reminders should only be sent if the respondent is still incomplete at the time the reminder is due, not at the time the workflow is triggered. Here is the exact logic I want to implement:
When a respondent starts the survey and a response is recorded, the workflow should wait 48 hours.
After 48 hours, the system should check the respondent’s current survey progress.
If progress is still <100%, send Reminder Email 1.
If the response has reached 100%, do nothing and stop the workflow for that respondent.
Then wait 7 days after Reminder Email 1.
After 7 days, the workflow should check progress again.
If progress is still <100%, send Reminder Email 2.
Otherwise stop the workflow.
Then wait another 14 days.
After this period, check progress again.
If still <100%, send Reminder Email 3.
Otherwise stop the workflow.
The issue I am facing is that in Workflows, when I set “Send After X days” inside an email action, the condition block after the email evaluates immediately, not at the scheduled send time. As a result, all three emails are scheduled at once based only on the initial progress value, rather than re-checking progress after each waiting period.
My questions for support:
How can I create a workflow that re-evaluates survey progress after each delay rather than evaluating everything at the initial trigger time?
Is there a way in Qualtrics Workflows to “pause” the workflow and then re-check conditions after a delay?
If workflows cannot re-evaluate conditions after a delay, what is the recommended method for implementing sequential conditional reminders based on progress (48 hours → 7 days → 14 days)?
Best answer by jake_dufinetz
Hi Neha,
Hi Jake,
Yes, you understood everything correctly, just to clarify, our consent form is also built in Qualtrics. Other than that, your explanation matches our setup exactly.
Great! Thank you for confirming. If that’s the case, here is a potential solution design, assuming you have XM Directory and Segments enabled for your brand. Depending how you want to deal with people who submit the intake survey multiple times, there may be additional design considerations.
Intake Form
Create a workflow in your intake form survey to create a contact in the XM Directory when the survey is submitted.
Set an embedded data field on the contact with the completion date of the intake form with the date format YYYY-MM-DD (Use the piped text syntax ${date://CurrentDate/DS}).
Example: Set ED field “Intake Completion Date” = “2025-11-05”
Main Survey
Create a workflow in your main survey to add an embedded data field to their XM Directory contact when the survey is submitted to flag that they completed their survey.
Example: Set ED field “Main Survey Status” = “Complete”
Scheduled Workflow
Create a scheduled workflow to run daily that creates a sample and emails a survey link to all contacts who have not completed the main survey and submitted their survey 2 days ago.
Trigger: Scheduled daily
Task 1: Create a sample
Use the mailing list where the contacts were inserted from the Intake Form workflow as the sample source.
Setup sampling criteria to pull 100% of contacts who match the following criteria:
ED field “Main Survey Status” does not equal “Complete”
ED field “Intake Completion Date” is Before the past 1 day and On or after the past 3 days
Task 2: Send a survey via email
Select the sample from task 1 as the source for the email distribution.
Setup reminders on the email task for distributions to send 5/12 days after the 1st email is sent (which will only go to those that did not complete the survey from the 1st email invite).
Note that this is also assuming users are entering the same email in both the consent form and the main survey since you are using an anonymous link. You could enhance this by including the email entered in the consent form as a URL parameter in the end of survey redirect URL to the main survey so that they automatically have their same email connected to the main survey.
Is there a reason you cannot use the out of the box reminder functionality? Using the “Send a survey via email task”, you can set up reminders on your distribution to be scheduled at 7, 14 etc days out from the initial invite. The reminder checks for completion status at 7 days, 14 days, etc as expected.
Thank you for your response. I’m using the exact same workflow behavior you described initially. The issue I’m facing is that the workflow gets triggered for all three reminder emails at once, they are simply scheduled to send after 48 hours, 7 days, and 14 days.
However, before sending the 2nd and 3rd emails, the workflow isn’t rechecking the condition (survey completion < 100%) at the time of sending. It seems that the condition is only evaluated once when the workflow is triggered, which causes the subsequent reminders to send even if the respondent has already completed the survey in the meantime.
You also mentioned using the “Send a survey via email” functionality as an alternative. I can explore that option, but our survey is not distributed via Qualtrics email; it’s hosted on our website as an anonymous individual link. Is there any way to still use that functionality or achieve the same delayed, conditional reminders for incomplete responses in this setup?
I’m not sure I understand your current workflow setup. If you are handling initial invites/distributions outside of Qualtrics, then automated reminders would not be supported by a workflow using the standard email tasks. The email tasks rely on an initial distribution being triggered from Qualtrics, so that it knows who received an invite and who has not completed their survey.
With non-Qualtrics distributed invites, having reminders triggered in Qualtrics via workflows would require at a minimum importing the full distribution list into Qualtrics so that some comparison could be done to check who all received the initial invite.
Could you further clarify how exactly you are looking for Qualtrics to identify the non-respondents from your survey? Or could you share how your workflow is currently setup?
Hi Jake,
Thank you for your response. I’m using the exact same workflow behavior you described initially. The issue I’m facing is that the workflow gets triggered for all three reminder emails at once, they are simply scheduled to send after 48 hours, 7 days, and 14 days.
However, before sending the 2nd and 3rd emails, the workflow isn’t rechecking the condition (survey completion < 100%) at the time of sending. It seems that the condition is only evaluated once when the workflow is triggered, which causes the subsequent reminders to send even if the respondent has already completed the survey in the meantime.
You also mentioned using the “Send a survey via email” functionality as an alternative. I can explore that option, but our survey is not distributed via Qualtrics email; it’s hosted on our website as an anonymous individual link. Is there any way to still use that functionality or achieve the same delayed, conditional reminders for incomplete responses in this setup?
Participants first complete a Consent Form, where they provide their email address. Once they submit it, they’re redirected to the main survey, which is distributed through an anonymous link (not a Qualtrics email distribution).
I am also attaching my workflow screenshot for better understanding.
The issue is that our current workflow triggers all three reminders at once (with delayed “Send After” actions), meaning Qualtrics doesn’t re-evaluate the “Finished = False” condition at each scheduled time. In other words, the system schedules future emails immediately, rather than checking progress again after each delay.
Thank you for the context of the consent form, that is helpful. When someone completes step 1 of completing the consent form, you want to make sure they complete step 2 of completing the main survey. If they complete the consent form but then do not complete the main survey within 2 days/7 days/14 days, then you want to send an email reminder from Qualtrics at each of those intervals. I also believe the consent form is not a Qualtrics survey, only the main survey is built in Qualtrics.
Can you confirm if my understanding above is correct?
Yes, you understood everything correctly, just to clarify, our consent form is also built in Qualtrics. Other than that, your explanation matches our setup exactly.
Yes, you understood everything correctly, just to clarify, our consent form is also built in Qualtrics. Other than that, your explanation matches our setup exactly.
Great! Thank you for confirming. If that’s the case, here is a potential solution design, assuming you have XM Directory and Segments enabled for your brand. Depending how you want to deal with people who submit the intake survey multiple times, there may be additional design considerations.
Intake Form
Create a workflow in your intake form survey to create a contact in the XM Directory when the survey is submitted.
Set an embedded data field on the contact with the completion date of the intake form with the date format YYYY-MM-DD (Use the piped text syntax ${date://CurrentDate/DS}).
Example: Set ED field “Intake Completion Date” = “2025-11-05”
Main Survey
Create a workflow in your main survey to add an embedded data field to their XM Directory contact when the survey is submitted to flag that they completed their survey.
Example: Set ED field “Main Survey Status” = “Complete”
Scheduled Workflow
Create a scheduled workflow to run daily that creates a sample and emails a survey link to all contacts who have not completed the main survey and submitted their survey 2 days ago.
Trigger: Scheduled daily
Task 1: Create a sample
Use the mailing list where the contacts were inserted from the Intake Form workflow as the sample source.
Setup sampling criteria to pull 100% of contacts who match the following criteria:
ED field “Main Survey Status” does not equal “Complete”
ED field “Intake Completion Date” is Before the past 1 day and On or after the past 3 days
Task 2: Send a survey via email
Select the sample from task 1 as the source for the email distribution.
Setup reminders on the email task for distributions to send 5/12 days after the 1st email is sent (which will only go to those that did not complete the survey from the 1st email invite).
Note that this is also assuming users are entering the same email in both the consent form and the main survey since you are using an anonymous link. You could enhance this by including the email entered in the consent form as a URL parameter in the end of survey redirect URL to the main survey so that they automatically have their same email connected to the main survey.
Do I need to create a separate embedded data field you mentioned as example: Set ED field “Main Survey Status” = “Complete” ? Or I can use already created survey metadata field?
You will want to create a new field in your XM Directory. This field will live on the Directory contact, not on the survey response.
Hi Jake,
Do I need to create a separate embedded data field you mentioned as example: Set ED field “Main Survey Status” = “Complete” ? Or I can use already created survey metadata field?
