Tutorial: Getting User Data into Surveys through Prepopulation

A common usage of SurveyGizmo is not as a survey per se, but as a form for updating or collecting customer or visitor data. This behaviour is called “pre-population”. In other cases, populating the survey with data is only a small portion of the overall survey, but provides data that feeds survey logic. Here are a few examples:

• Update Contact Information
• Respondent details affecting logic (e.g. Account level information)
• Product History (also used for logic)

There are 4 main methods for pre-populating a survey:

• Email Invitation Contacts (9 fields)
• Query String (< 2000 or 4000 characters, varies)
• Survey Login (255 fields)
• HTTP POST and 3rd Party Integration (2 MegaBytes or more)

The following overviews of each method will include links to other tutorials or articles, strengths and weaknesses of each method, and a summary of the overall usage.

Email Invitation Contacts

Email Invitation Contacts are fully integrated into SurveyGizmo and create the simplest integration of all the methods. A contact can have up to 9 fields associated with it:

• Email Address (required)
• First Name
• Last Name
• Organization
• Custom 1
• Custom 2
• Custom 3
• Custom 4
• Custom 5

While the field may be named ‘First Name’, it can contain any data you prefer, as long as you are aware and consistent in the data stored. The fields are referred to by their names (listed above) when incorporating them into the survey. When a contact is added to your survey invitation, and that email invitation is sent, the recipient clicking the link will ‘pull’ the contact information as it is currently stored on SurveyGizmo when they access the survey for the first time. This will automatically be associated with the response and be available as part of the csv/xls export as well as when browsing individual responses. It is even accessible as part of filtering in reporting!

You can find Email Invitations under the ‘Email Invites’ tab within a survey. Secondarily, within a contact group (default value box) or question title in the survey, the Simple Piping Wizard on the right side will provide a drop-down for merge codes, which includes the merge codes to ‘pull in’ invitation data and display (or store) it in the survey.

Strengths: Completely integrated, familiar (address books), requires no outside services
Weaknesses: Maximum of 9 different items to pre-populate, data associated with email address field across entire account

When you have dynamic fields that need to change for a single email address, this method can be combined with the Query String method using the Dynamic Custom Fields for a Single Email Address tutorial.

Query String (URL Variables)

Query Strings are the values added onto the end of the survey link that pass a name/value pair, such as “firstname=Bob”. Within SurveyGizmo, you can get the value by using the [%%GET_xxx] merge code, which could look like the following: [%%GET_firstname]. This would be replaced with whatever value, ‘Bob’, is associated with ‘firstname’. There is a complete 3-part tutorial series on passing values into a survey through the query string! Data is captured within the response and can even be used in filtering, even if the merge code is not used!

Strengths: Works without configuration in the survey, easy to implement, can be controlled outside of SurveyGizmo
Weaknesses: Maximum of 2000 characters in the query string, can create long URLs (if not hidden in HTML), small learning curve

Survey Login Action

The Survey Login action serves three possible purposes when placed at the beginning of the survey:

• Single reusable password used by all respondents
• One time use passwords that are marked as ‘used’ once a respondent enters them. Blocks unwanted retaking of the survey.
• Survey Password linked to an uploaded CSV/spreadsheet of associated data for pre-population

For pre-population, the last method is the only one that gives the opportunity to apply previously uploaded/included data to questions later in the survey. The Survey Login action works by associating a password to additional data contained in the rest of the columns for that row. For instance, here is an example of a row of data that could be used for pre-population:

Password,Name,Age,Email,Dept
pass,John Smith,29,john@mailinator.com,Marketing

Once the data is loaded into the Survey Login action, the action will display a series of drop-downs to allow you to match up each column from the uploaded spreadsheet to a particular question within the survey:

The following question types can be pre-populated by the Survey Login action:

• Open textbox
• List of textboxes
• Essay
• Radio button
• Checkbox (1 column per checked option)
• Drop-down menu
• List of drop-down menus
• Table of radio buttons (by row)
• Continuous Sum
• Star Ranking (by row, effects all columns)
• Contact form fields
• Custom Group: open textbox
• Custom Group: essay
• Custom Group: radio button
• Custom Group: drop-down menu

Make sure that the values used in the uploaded CSV file match the Reporting Value for radio button, checkbox, and drop-down question types! In the case of star rankings, the values should be numeric (the number of stars selected, e.g. 2). Finally, make sure that the Survey Login action is at the beginning of your survey, while the fields that will be pre-populated are on later pages within the survey. They cannot be on the same page as the Survey Login action.

Strengths: One-time setup, up to 255 separate options/questions can be pre-populated, provides security in a barrier to entry for taking the survey
Weaknesses: Requires manual updating by uploading a new CSV when making moderate changes, can not be combined with the ‘one time use’ Survey Login option

HTTP POST and 3rd Party Integration

Communicating with external systems, websites, or custom pages allows a unique method for pre-populating your survey by interacting with external databases of information, whether stored in one of our partner’s websites or building a custom interaction to your own company. In almost all cases you can also send data from the survey to populate the external databases as well! The following options provide more information about 3rd Party integration:

• ExactTarget Integration
  Pre-populate subscriber information based on their Subscriber ID
• SalesForce Integration
  Pre-populate content based on a Salesforce query with a unique Contact ID
• HTTP POST Action
  Pre-populate with a returned url encoded string from a custom webpage and script

Strengths: Integrates with existing information and has automatic communication without continuous human interaction, easy user interface for SalesForce and ExactTarget
Weaknesses: Large learning curve and programming knowledge/resources required with HTTP POST

If you have any further questions, please use our community forums to discuss!