Case study: Emailing a follow-up program to the participants of your questionnaire

One common use for GuidedTrack is to deliver a questionnaire and then give the participant some feedback based on their answers. Here are some examples that may have that structure:

  • A survey or study where you evaluate the participant’s responses and tell them how they compare to others who previously answered the same survey.
  • An assessment tool where, based on the answers of the participant, you suggest different exercises for them to do.
  • An educational tool where you identify the user’s prior knowledge on the subject and you deliver educational modules tailored for them.

You may want to email this feedback to the users of your program so that they can save it and access it at a later time.

On this step-by-step case study we guide you through the process of generating a report program for a survey and generating a URL that you can share with the users of the questionnaire via email.

Start by creating two programs, one will be your survey and the second one your report. Let’s look at the code inside each of them!

In your survey program you will create your questionnaire, saving the answers that you will use in the report as variables. In the survey of this case study there are two questions:

*question: How many hours do you sleep on average every night?
	*type: number
	*save: hoursOfSleep

*question: How rested do you usually feel after a typical night of sleep?
	I’m always tired
		>>wellRested=0
	It takes me a while to be fully awake, but then I’m fine
		>>wellRested=1
	I am ready to go as soon as I’m awake
		>>wellRested=2

Afterward, you ask the participants of the survey for their email to send them their link to the report:

*question: Please, enter your email if you would like to receive the results to this survey via email:
	*tip: You can leave this blank if you don't want your results via email.
	*save: email
	*blank

Then you generate the link to the report program, passing the value of their answers as URL parameters, and save it to a variable. In this case, we have called that variable reportLink:

>>reportLink = "https://www.guidedtrack.com/programs/e4q95ez/run?hoursOfSleep={hoursOfSleep}&wellRested={wellRested}"

This is how you build the report link:

  1. Create a new program for your report. Go to Publish and click on the Copy button under Send the program link directly

In this case, the run link of the program is https://www.guidedtrack.com/programs/e4q95ez/run

  1. Then, add their answers as URL parameters. You use the symbol ? to indicate that you are appending parameters to the URL, with the format ?parameter1=value1&parameter2=value2&parameter3=value3 … (for each additional parameter, you will use the & symbol followed by the name of the parameter, the = sign and the value of the parameter). 

As you can see, in our program we have added two parameters: hoursOfSleep and wellRested. The name of the parameters in this case is the same as the name of the variables in the program, but you can choose whatever names you prefer, just avoid spaces and special characters! In order to set the value of each parameter to whatever is stored in your variables, you surround their names with {brackets}: hoursOfSleep={hoursOfSleep}, wellRested={wellRested}.

For example, if the participant of the survey had said that they sleep 10 hours a day on average and that they always feel tired when they wake up, when the line of code 

>>reportLink = "https://www.guidedtrack.com/programs/e4q95ez/run?hoursOfSleep={hoursOfSleep}&wellRested={wellRested}"

gets executed, the value of the variable reportLink becomes:

https://www.guidedtrack.com/programs/e4q95ez/run?hoursOfSleep=10&wellRested=0

Finally, you generate the email sending this link to the participants:

*email
	*subject: Your assessment results!
	*to: {email}
	*body
		[Click on this link|{reportLink}] to see your assessment report.

When you test this program, you will see that you receive an email where the text “Click on this link” is a hyperlink that goes to the URL that you generated.

In the case study we have chosen to display the report right after the survey as well. This is totally optional and we include it here to make this case study as generic as possible:

Here are your assessment reports:

*program: case study - sleep report

Thank you for participating in our survey!

Now, on to the code inside the report program:

*if: hoursOfSleep < 5
	It seems that you suffer from some serious sleep deprivation!
	
*chart: Your hours of sleep compared to the average hours of sleep reported by people who participated in our study
	*type: bar
	*data: [["You", hoursOfSleep], ["Average", 8]]
	
*button: Tell me more!
*image: https://images.pexels.com/photos/1560424/pexels-photo-1560424.jpeg

*if: wellRested < 2
	Based on your answer to the question "how rested do you usually feel when you wake up?", we suggest that you discuss with your doctor how you can improve your sleep.
	
*if: wellRested = 2
	It is great that you wake up so energetic!

As you can see, the report program uses the variables hoursOfSleep and wellRested. When this program is run from within the survey with the code *program: case study – sleep report, all of the variables in the main program (the survey) are accessible from the subprogram (the report), so it will automatically take the values that the user entered. 

When the program is run using the link in the email, GuidedTrack automatically reads the URL parameters and generates variables with those names and values before starting to run the code in the program.  

You can use these variables to generate customized and interactive reports based on their answers, where you can display their results in different pages, include media, generate charts and much more!

Feel free to explore the code of these two programs and duplicate them to adapt them to meet your needs:

https://www.guidedtrack.com/programs/17725/

https://www.guidedtrack.com/programs/17726/

You can also run the survey using this link to better understand how these two programs work.