Contact List Trigger question
+1Greetings all, I've inherited a situation where we have a pretty messed up registration survey and I am reworking it from the ground up. The survey in question basically asks a number of questions (demographics, contact info, likes/dislikes. etc) and then has a Contact List trigger where, upon survey completion, all the answers to the survey questions are sent into a Panel as embedded data fields. The checkbox for "update existing list members" is checked. This survey is publicly available as a web page where people come to sign up.
So, now that I have the survey set up the correct way only collecting information that we really need I'd like to put it into production and also send an email to existing panel members to hit the survey again. The reason I need to do this is because some of the important fields were not forced responses last time and people didn't fill them out. Additionally, many of the interests we now ask about were not options back then. Basically I want to start capturing new folks with the survey but I also want to update current Directory members' information.
What has me nervous is this line from the contact list triggers page:
> Qtip: Update existing contact list members will only update if the Individual Link or Multiple Completes Link were used in a survey invitation, or if an Authenticator is used. The emailed/authenticated contact list must be the same one in the trigger. Otherwise, a new contact will be created in the contact list instead.
I'm not really sure what that means? This registration survey is open to any and everyone on the web if they have the URL. Additionally, I am only using email address as my auto-deduplication method. So, if someone with the email address joe@fake.com goes to the URL and takes the survey and then, a day later, goes back to the same URL and takes the survey again, won't it just update his info in the Directory (which is what I want--people to be able to update their info and if it's the same email the contact is updated).
Or is that Qtip only referring to if I sent the *survey* directly in an email to existing members? I would have to use Individual Link or Multiple Completes?
Basically I don't want to have to use Authenticators in my survey -- I just want this registration survey to be out there and any time someone fills it out it updates their info in the Directory/Panel.
+27Basically, it is saying that you can only update an existing member if it knows the response is from the same member (verified by invitation link or authentication). Also, the contact list in the trigger has to be the same list you used to either send the invitation or authenticate against.
Bottom line, if you send out Qualtrics invitations to your existing members and you set your contact trigger to update the same list you sent from, then people who take the survey from the link you send them will update their existing info. New contacts will be created for each person who uses the anonymous link on your website.
+1Thanks for the response Tom. I think I need to expand my question a bit. I guess I should have also stated that we're Target Audience users (if that makes a difference). I am thinking about things more on the Directory level than the Mailing List/Panel level. Here's my understanding of things--maybe you can see if I'm off on some of these things? Let's say these first questions just deal with new users who go to a registration URL on our website to "Open Access" registration surveys.
* The Directory contains *everyone* that you are registering and storing embedded data on correct? So if I had two registration surveys, and one dumped all the embedded data via contact list trigger into a contact list "registration1" and the second survey (different URL) dumped everything into a contact list "registration2" while people in mailing list "registration1" would *not* be in mailing list "registration2" (and vice versa), they would *both* be in "The Directory" correct?
* If that is true, let's say that survey1 in my above example is exactly the same as survey2 (except the destination contact list). If a person with the email john@fake.com took survey1, they would go into contact list "registration1" *and* the Directory. Then, a day later, if that same person took survey2, what would happen? I assume they would go into contact list "registration2" but they would *not* go into the Directory a second time--wouldn't it just update the embedded data in the Directory to whatever they put in for survey2 (as both surveys had the same contact list trigger with the same embedded data fields)? As they would have the same email address and thus Qualtrics would choose the more recent information to overwrite the embedded data from survey1?
Now on the topic of updating current people in our Directory, I do want to update as many of them as possible. But many of them do *not* belong to a mailing list. They are people that were just imported straight into the Directory. So that's why I'm trying to master exactly what happens here. I guess here is what I am after in a perfect world since I inherited this project:
* I have created a new Open Access survey which is dialed in perfectly according to the needs of my researchers
* I have created an contact list trigger on this survey that adds people and their embedded data from survey responses to a *new* contact list that no one is a member of yet.
* I would like anyone going to the registration survey URL (website) to be able to fill the new survey out and if they fill it out a day, week, month, or year later, I would like it to simply update their info--*not* create a duplicate entry in the Directory or contact list.
* I would like to email *everyone* currently in the Directory to take the new survey to update their data. There are a lot of users in the Directory and only about half of them are currently in the contact list associated with the old (but still current and in production) registration survey I'm trying to phase out.
So what's my best play here? Just put every single person in my Directory into a new contact list, make the contact list trigger on the new survey feed that contact list, and then send Individual Links to everyone in that new contact list (which would be all the same folks that are in the Directory)? And then people who just go to the registration website I don't need to worry about because the contact list trigger will just see the same email and simply update their current entry with the most recent registration survey results?
+1Hmm... I'm wondering if any of what I typed matters at all because of how automatic deduplication works for iQ Direcotry (which I guess is what Target Audience is now called?). Here's the quote:
> iQ Directory allows you to consolidate duplicate contacts after they’ve been created, but it can also catch duplicates as they’re being added to the directory. Automatic Deduplication will check whether the person you are trying to add matches the deduplication fields for any existing contacts in the directory. If the contact already exists, a new contact will not be created with the same information as another. Instead, the existing directory contact will be updated with any new information you have added, such as new or updated Embedded Data values.
If I'm reading that right, and I have my auto deduplication set to Email (which I do), no matter what I do, whenever *anyone* fills *anything* out that injects embedded data into the Directory I should be fine because as long as I'm sending their email in at the start of the trigger (which I am) it will simply update the existing contact if they already exist in the directory. If they don't exist they'll be created.
I mean am I reading this wrong? Or is there basically no way I can screw this up? Because that would be great :)
+27> @ironspider said:
> If I'm reading that right, and I have my auto deduplication set to Email (which I do), no matter what I do, whenever *anyone* fills *anything* out that injects embedded data into the Directory I should be fine because as long as I'm sending their email in at the start of the trigger (which I am) it will simply update the existing contact if they already exist in the directory. If they don't exist they'll be created.
>
> I mean am I reading this wrong? Or is there basically no way I can screw this up? Because that would be great :)
That's correct. However, some households and small businesses share emails. If you need to accommodate those, you need to use a combination of name and email or unique external references.
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