Summary

Automated survey invitations are a way to have additional survey invitations sent to participants based on the completion of another instrument and/or if certain data values are fulfilled for a given record. This reduces the need for manually scheduling follow-up emails as they can be sent automatically.

Automated Invitations

Automated Invitations Settings

• Activate automated invitations for this survey? - Users can enable and disable the Automated Survey Invitation here.
  
   
• Step 1: Compose Message - Users can customize the email message for when the ASI is triggered.
  
   
• Step 2: Conditions - Users set the conditional logic for when the ASI should be sent.
  
   
• Step 3: When to send invitations AFTER conditions are met - Users determine when the ASI is sent after the conditions have been met.
  
   
• Optional: Enable reminders - Additionally, users can schedule automatic reminder emails to prompt the participant if they don't complete the next survey in a set time.
  
   

How to set up Automated Invitations

• Create at least two instruments. For this example, the first instrument/survey includes two fields: (1) email (required for ASI) and (2) follow_up. The second instrument in this example, has a single field utd_experience.
  
  
  
  
   
• From the Online Designer view, click on the “Automated Invitations” button for which instrument which the Automated Invitations should be sent. In this example, Form 2's Automated Invitations is selected.
  
   
• Activate the automated invitations for this survey.
  
   
• Compose the email message.
  
   
  • From – Select any project user to be the “Sender”. Display names are optional but can be used to show a name versus an email address.
  • To – The recipients email defaults based on the email address on the form. In this example, it was the email validated text box set on the first survey. (Note: the email field must be designate an email field for communications (including survey invitations and alerts) on the Project Setup page.)
  • Subject – Set the subject line of the email.
  • Email body – Customize the language of the Automated Invitation. (Note: The email body doesn’t require survey link ([survey-link], [survey-URL]). Automated Invitations can be used more as a notification this way rather than an invitation for an additional survey)
• Identify what conditions need to be met in order to trigger the Automated Invitation.
  
   
  • Specify conditions for sending invitations – Conditions for sending invitations can be set by completion of a form and/or conditional logic. In this example, automated invitations will be sent when “Form 1” is completed and when the follow-up field value equals 1.
  • Ensure logic is still true before sending invitation? – This is an optional setting. When enabled, REDCap will re-evaluate the logic against the record’s data whenever the record values are changed AFTER the invitation has been scheduled but BEFORE it has been sent to the respondent. If the logic is no longer true, then invitations won’t be sent to the respondent.
• Set when invitations are to be sent after conditions are met – There are several options when scheduling invitations. Users can set emails to go out immediately, on the next specified day and time, after some time lapsed, or on a specific date and time.
  
   
• Optional: Set email reminders – There are several options when setting up reminder emails. Users can set emails to go out every specified day and time, after some specified day/hour/minutes has lapsed, or on a specific date and time. There is an additional option to set the number of recurrences.
  
   
• Save – In addition to “Save”, there is an option to “Save & Copy to…” other instruments in this project
  
   

Automated Invitations Example





Additional Auto Invitation Options

• Upload Automated Survey Invitations settings (CSV) - Users may import the Automated Survey Invitation settings for all surveys/events in a single CSV file, which must contain all the required columns, each with a valid value (see below). Uploading many ASI settings at once can often be less time-consuming than entering them one at a time.
• Download all Automated Survey Invitations settings (CSV) – Users may download the Automated Survey Invitations settings for all surveys/events in a single CSV file. This file can be used to upload in another project to copy over the Automated Survey Invitations settings into another project.
• Re-evaluate Automated Survey Invitations - Re-evaluating an Automated Survey Invitations will schedule invitations that haven't been scheduled that should be scheduled, and conversely, it will remove any invitations that are currently scheduled that should not be scheduled (because the Automated Survey Invitations condition no longer evaluates as TRUE). Re-evaluating an Automated Survey Invitations will *NOT* modify already scheduled invitations.