Capture Reference Information

User Support Data Collection
1

Hi,

I’m conducting a survey, which needs to be answered by a closed set of people (all of them), after receiving the link to the form via e-mail. The issue is that I need to be able to identify the people that have already answered, without relying solely on responses on the form that may have typos or erroneous information, so I’m wondering if there’s anyway in which I can capture any information to make it possible.

I’m thinking of something like the e-mail address capture that can be done on Google Forms. It
could also be a pre-assigned ID number. Since I’m emailing the link to the people that need to respond, and I can previously tailor them for each one of the respondents, I’m wondering if it is possible to extract and store information on the link (just like the form can redirect to an external page upon submission, fill a field on the form according to the link), or maybe even an exernal service that allows me to see if the particular link has been opened.

I’m really lost here, so I’m sorry if the question is a bit messy, but I’d really appreciate any solution.

Thanks in advance.

2

Hi
This may not be directly a functionality of the system, but rather a design of your form to enable you track this. I propose the following workaround:

  1. Create a data base of everyone and generate a unique code to be used by each person e.g.
    person1@email.com code is 12345
    person2@email.com code is 23456
    person3@email.com code is 34567
    kindly ensure that this code is difficult to crack; I normally would use a random number generator combined with a random letter generator which makes it almost impossible to guess a code.

  2. Create a question that can only accept one of the codes i.e. acts like a password protection. You can do this by using constraints which is clearly explained in our articles.

  3. When you send your emails with the link, you can always use mail merge to ensure that each person gets their unique code, that way they would use the code to enter the data. Since you have the background information associated to the user based on their code, this sorts out your issue…

Regards
Stephane

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3

Hi Stephane,

Thanks for your help.

I’ll try and implement your suggestion. The only issue that I see with it is that it could still be susceptible to typos. The only constraint that I can think of is one with a regex requiring different lengths for a combination of letters and numbers, but I would still be able to input an incorrect character on a certain position. Were you thinking on a different approach for the constraint.

Again, thanks for your answers, your help and your time.

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