ChilliDB has a couple ways in which the Survey can be used. Either it can be sent to a Contact or Organisation to fill out, or it can be filled out by a staff member who is doing so with the person being Surveyed, over the phone, or in a meeting, or it could a link on your website which captures anonymous responses.
Send Survey links (Invitations)
Once a Survey has been published then invitations can be sent to Contacts, Organisations and Distribution Lists in ChilliDB. You can also use the Contact and Organisation Search pages in ChilliDB, perform a search of your database, and then select Send Survey from the Actions menu for the Search Results grid, to send Surveys.
Basic Rules
Only Surveys which are “Published” can be selected for use.
Only Surveys which are Available (Survey Availability From / Survey Availability To) can be selected for use.
This section will discuss the mechanics of sending a Survey invitation. Follow the below steps to send an invitation to participate in a Survey:
1. Click on the Invitations tab on the Survey display screen.
2. Click on Create link to search for Respondent(s). A “Find Respondent (s)” pop-up box will display.
3. Use the radio button to select the Search criteria. Depending on the security options you choose for your Survey, these radio buttons and filters can behave differently. For instance, if you have Login defined for the Survey, then it will return only Contacts with an External User Login. Click Search.
4. A list will populate in a drop down box. Click on the chosen respondent and click Select.
The chosen respondent will now appear in the “Survey Invitation List”.
5. Click in the checkbox and Click Actions and select Send Invitation from the dropdown list. A “Refine Recipients of the Message” pop-up box will display.
6. Check details of the recipient(s) and either delete incorrect recipient(s) and click Continue. This screen allows you to choose between the communications addresses for your recipient. If the recipient does not have a communication address, you can add one here against their Contact or Organisation record. You can also remove a recipient if you need to.
7. A Send Message pop-up box will display. Complete all mandatory fields such as To, Subject, and Categorisation. You may add additional recipients by clicking “Find” next to the “To” field. Follow the prompts to add additional recipients.
8.You need to enter the content for your invitation. You have two options here:
Create your Invitation Content now
Just enter any content you like into the HTML Content and Plain Text Content sections of the form. The Plain Text Content is for those recipients who do not receive HTML emails, which is not many. It is best to copy the Content from the HTML field into the Plain Text so you are controlling the way your recipients receive the invitation, regardless of how they read email. You will need to keep the link part of the existing content so your recipients can use the link to access the Survey. If you lose the existing content, you can use the Mail Merge Token and select the Survey token.
OR
Use a Message Template
Select Action > Use Template.
When the Message Templates popup appears with a listing of all Message Template sin your system, locate the one you would like to use and then click checkbox for the template you wish to use, then click Load. If you are not sure, click on its name and you can review the Message Template to decide if that is the one you are looking for.
When you select the Load link, the selected Messages Template will populate the email invitation with the template
You view a Template by selecting the Template Name.
You can use the Create Like link to duplicate an existing template, then make changes and save it to use.
You can Load an existing template.
You can Overwrite an existing template with the content back in the Send Message window to use again in future.
For this example, select Load to load a template. The Send Message screen will confirm that you want to replace its’ content with the content from the template and then, load all of the content from the template into the Send Message screen. Message Templates also include Subjects and Categorisation selections so the whole screen will change.
9. Test your message!
If you use Send Test from the Send Message screen and try send it to your own Organisation, then it will lead to unexpected results when it tries to pre-populate the Survey. The Sent Test in this scenario, is only useful to review the Message Templates until you are happy with it. To test the defaulting of information into your Survey, you need to create a Test Contact or Organisation in your system, and actually send the Invitation to that Contact or Organisation.
10. Once you are happy with your Invitation, click Send. Your invitation to complete a Survey has now been sent to your chosen respondent(s).
Sending Reminders
Once a Survey invitation has been sent to your Contacts, Organisations and/ or Distribution Lists in ChilliDB you may wish to send a reminder to ensure the Survey is completed in your desired timeframe. You can use the filters above the grid to filter the Invitations to those who have not Commenced, Not Completed and a combination of the two.
Follow the below steps to send a reminder to recipients in a Survey:
1. Click in the checkbox to select recipient from the “Survey Invitation List” on the Invitations tab of the Survey.
2. Select Actions > Send Reminder.
3. A pop-up box will appear to validate the chosen recipients. Click Continue if recipient details are correct.
4. A Send Message pop-up box will display. Complete all mandatory fields such as To, Subject, and Categorisation. You may add additional recipients by clicking “Find” next to the “To” field. Follow the prompts to add additional recipients.
5. You need to enter the content for your Reminder. You have two options here: