Updated “Send Email” task does not allow for sending a follow up based on response to survey Q

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.

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