Greetings... We have a user at our organization who configured a survey with the following options:



open access

prevent indexing

secure participants files

survey expiration 03-02-2020 9:15 to 03-09-2020 17:00, default survey link expiration message

default end of survey message

anonymize responses

default inactive survey message

delete responses in progress 1 week after respondents start of survey



The survey flow for this survey has an authenticator as the first step with SSO, respondent with panel linked to a list of contacts. SSO type is google Oauth 2.0 with restrict authentication set to our domain (oakland.edu). The authenticator options are set to max authentication attempts=30.



These settings have always worked for us on other surveys in the past. On this survey, however, the survey collected data fine for two days (100+ responses collected) and then it started posting the "sorry this survey has already expired" message on the third day (03/04/2020, several days before the defined expiration date). This message would immediately appear for me (or anybody) pasting the anonymous link into a newly opened browser.



We tried resetting the expiration dates under survey options and republishing with no effect. We also tried deleting in progress attempts (again, with no effect).



Grasping at straws, I told the user to reset the max authentication attempts on the authenticator from 30 to 3000 and after doing that, the survey started working again (at least to the point where it is now asking users to login rather than just posting that "sorry" message). Based on this, I believe that there must have been 30 failed authentication attempts (probably from a variety of users) and that locked everyone out of the survey, until we increased the threshold.



Is this expected behavior? I thought (based on qualtrics docs) that the max authentication attempts would be bound to a specific user (maybe IP) attempt, not globally to everyone trying to use the survey. Even if I am not understanding the setting correctly, it seems like the error that appears (survey expired) is misleading.



Thanks, - JC