This guide will show you the different ways in which you can use the Text Merge feature to personalize your survey and email invitation content.
CONTENTS
You can merge text into questions and email invitations from various sources, including:
- Survey Item Answers: Respondents' answers to previous questions
- pare-Registered User Attributes: Profile property attributes such as First Name, Last Name, and Email Address.
- Response Data: Information related to the individual survey response, such as IP address, Current Date, Language, etc.
- Survey Data: Survey GUID
In this example, we will be merging in a respondent's answer to the open response question, "What is your name?" into the text of a message item on the next page.
NOTE: You can only merge in Survey Item Answers from survey items on previous pages.
The next page contains a Message Item. The text in this item reads :Thank you for entering your name, XXXXX." We will apply merging here to replace these exes with the respondent's name entered on the previous page.
Follow the steps below to complete this text merge:
1. Select Survey Item. Open the "Edit" tab if you are in a Message Item. Open the "Question Text" or tab if you are in a Question Item.
2. Select in the text box where you wish to merge in text
3. From the Merge Drop-Down, select a source. In this example, our source will be a Survey Item Answer, because we wish to merge in the answer to a previous question. The question we will choose as our source value is "What is your name", which is the question asked on the previous page.
4. Click the "Merge" button to insert the Source Value Code
NOTE: Follow the steps above to merge Survey Item Answers into most Checkbox Question Items.
Once the "Merge" button is selected, a Source Value Code is inserted into the item text.
The Source Value Code is the place-holder for the source value you selected from the merge drop-down menu. Only the survey creator/editor will see this code. This code should automatically fill in with whatever that source value is (the user's name, in this example) when the survey is being respondent to. Always test your merging logic before making your survey live to respondents.
Test Survey:
In this example, "Jessica" was entered as the answer to the question "What is your name?".
Once the respondent continues to the next page in the survey, their answer to "What is your name?" is then merged into the text of the message in place of the source value code that was inserted in the Survey Editor. The source value code has automatically filled in with "Jessica".
Open Ended Single-Line and Multi-Line Text Items allow you to insert default text.
Default text is text that you can add to an Open Ended Text Item in the Survey Editor, and is then pre-populated into that item's text field when a respondent reaches that item in the survey. The default text can then be left alone, deleted, or modified by the respondent.
Text Merging can be used to insert a source value as the default text of an Open Ended Text Item. In this example, we will merge a User Attribute (also referred to as a Profile Property) into a Single Line Text Item to display as the default text to respondents. Specifically, we will merge a respondent's first name directly from their profile in Checkbox's User Manager.
NOTE: User Attributes can only be used as the source for merging when a respondent has a user profile (requires a username and password) within your account's User Manager.
Follow the steps below to complete this text merge:
1. Open the "Behavior" tab
2. Select in the Default Text box
3. From the Merge Drop-Down, select FirstName under the Profile source category. This profile label will pull the user's first name directly from their user profile in the User Manager.
4. Click the "Merge" button to insert the Source Value Code (@@FirstName)
5. Save your changes
Saving your changes will return you to the Preview tab in the Survey Editor. You should see the source value code appear in the text field as default text.
Make sure you are logged in when you test this merging logic. You should see your name appear as the default text
Before testing your merging logic, go into the User Manager and into your user profile to make sure your name is entered in the FirstName text field. This is the data source the merged source value code (@@FirstName) refers to.
Test Survey:
Make sure you are logged in when you test this merging logic. When you reach the survey item that you added the merging logic to, you should see your name appear as the default text in place of the source value code.
User Attributes and Survey Data can be merged into the subject line or message body of email invitations.
Open an email Invitation message and follow the steps below to complete this text merge:
1. Select in the message body text box where you wish to merge in text
2. From the Merge Drop-Down, select a User Attribute or Survey Data and click the "Merge" button to insert the Source Value Code.
In the above example, we wish to merge in a Checkbox registered user's first name into the salutation.
NOTE: Merging in user attributes will only fill in with pre-registered user information. If you are deploying an invitation to an Email List (no login credentials required), not a Checkbox User or User Group, there will be no user data to merge into the email and the source value code will be left blank.
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