Updated “Send Email” task does not allow for sending a follow up based on response to survey Q | XM Community
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Hi folks,

 

I have seen folks posting the the deprecation of the XM Directory task breaks some of their Salesforce workflows. However, I have a much simpler workflow that is not supported by the new workflow.  

We have surveys that folks access via an anonymous link. We used the XM directory task to distribute follow-up surveys at 30 and 90 days post response to those who provide contact information information from the survey.  The piped text from their response to the question was used as the mail to address for the distribute survey task. Is there an alternative way to make this happen?

 

Hi ​@MargaretW  — yes, you’re not alone. The deprecation of the XM Directory “Send Email” task broke quite a few lightweight workflows like yours, especially the ones relying on piped email addresses from anonymous survey links.

Since the new “Distribute Survey” task in Workflows requires either a known contact in XM Directory or a pre-linked transaction, it no longer supports dynamic, piped-in email addresses the way the old task did.

One workaround that’s still functional:

Use a Web Service Task → Trigger a custom script (e.g., via Make, Zapier, or a webhook endpoint)

Here’s how:
    1.    In your survey Workflow, after the response is submitted, create a Web Service task.
    2.    Pass the email address (piped from the embedded data or contact question) and any custom fields to a simple webhook (e.g., hosted on Make, Integromat, or a lightweight serverless function).
    3.    That script or automation can then send the email or even use the Qualtrics API to trigger a distribution manually.

It’s definitely more work upfront, but it gives you the flexibility to dynamically handle addresses collected via anonymous links — which the new Distribute Survey task no longer allows.

I hope it works.
-- Rochak

Thanks for your reply, Rochak. Your reply makes sense. I’ve not used a web service task before, but I think I can figure it out. I like the way you describe my use case as “light weight,.”  It seems like this change has little impact for enterprise users who use Qualtrics with Salesforce or another product. This is not a great change for researchers who just want to follow up easily.  Of course that is not your doing, so I’ll stop ranting. Thanks so much again for replying.  Take care.

Hi,

I don’t think you need external calls at all for that. Add an update xm directory contact task between your trigger and distributions, and target the transaction created in that task in your distributions.

 

Vincent, thank you. I’ll give that a try and share my results. Thank you again. Take care.

 

Marge

Vincent, I was able to test your solution after asking my brand administrator to enable the task, and it worked. Thanks so much.  Marge

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