Getting User Data into Surveys through Prepopulation

Version 3.x Instructions
Optional: Go to the SurveyGizmo version 2.x instructions

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 (18 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 18 fields associated with it:

• Email Address (required)
• First Name
• Last Name
• Organization
• Department
• Home Phone
• Work Phone
• Fax
• Street
• Suite
• City
• Region/State
• Zip/Postal Code
• Job Title
• Website
• 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 ‘Publish’ tab by creating a new Email Campaign within a survey. Secondarily, within a question title in the survey, the Merge Code Wizard on the bottom right side, “Insert Merge Code…”, 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 18 different items to pre-populate

Email Invitation Data is split into two types: Main contact information and Custom fields. The Custom fields (Custom 1, Custom 2, etc.) are unique to only that particular email campaign. The main contact information is global across the entire account and all surveys and email campaigns.

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 [url("xxx")] merge code, which could look like the following: [url("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

Login/Password Action

Check out the video tutorial on prepopulation and password protection through the Login/Password action

The Login/Password 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 Login/Password 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 Login/Password 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 Login/Password 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 Group fields
• Custom Group

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 Login/Password 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 Login/Password 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

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