Everything you need to know about Outset URLs

When you're recruiting participants externally or sharing test links, you'll be sharing an Outset URL.
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Sometimes, if you're recruiting participants externally, you may have information about those participants that you want to send to Outset. Alternatively, you may have metadata that you want to track upon completion of the survey and send externally.
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Read more to learn about how URLs can be used to pass metadata into and out of Outset.

Before we get into details about how to customize links, there are two types of links used in Outset studies:
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Shareable Survey Link:

Individual Interview URL:

If a participant starts an interview session but doesn’t complete it, and later clicks the shareable link again, they’ll re-start a new session with a different interview ID. If participants are seeing an “expired link” message, it usually means they’re trying to return to a personal session URL that’s no longer valid.
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💡Tip: We encourage participants to finish the interview in one sitting OR save their individual interview link – as long as they complete it within 24 hrs – to avoid confusion. Read more at this article: Can participants pause and re-start an interview later?

To distribute your study, use the Shareable Survey Link found under Recruit > Recruit on my own > Shareable link. This is the link to provide to your third party panel or your list of participants to route them to your Outset study.

Once they click on this link, a unique Individual Interview URL (described above) tied to that specific interview session and participant will be generated.

Note: This Shareable link will only be active when your study is Live in Outset!

Sometimes, if you're recruiting participants externally, you may have information about those participants that you want to send to Outset.

For example:

To send this participant data into Outset, all you need to do is adjust the link that participants use to take the survey.
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​Step 1: Locate the Shareable survey link
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Navigate to Recruit > Recruit on my own, then copy the "Shareable link," which is the standard survey URL that is used to recruit participants externally.

Step 2: Customize the shareable link to pass the metadata fields that you need to be present in Outset

For example, let's say the standard interview link is the following:

https://api.outset.ai/interviews/public-surveys/abc123/start/
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Let's say you have a single metadata field you want to send into outset:

All you have to do here is add a unique ending to the survey URL for each participant. For example, the link below could be sent out to participant #12345. Then, when that participant completes the survey, their participant ID will show up as a visible field on their transcript.

https://api.outset.ai/interviews/public-surveys/abc123/start/?participant-id=12345

What if you want to add two metadata fields?

For participant #12345, who is a "premium" product customer, your custom URL would be the following - all you have to do is link the two metadata fields with a question mark in between the fields.

https://api.outset.ai/interviews/public-surveys/abc123/start/?participant-id =12345&customer-type=premium

Now that this data has been passed into Outset, you can review these two fields on participant transcripts and also do custom reporting based on these groups (e.g., premium vs. basic).

💡 TIP: if you have many individualized links you'll need to send out (e.g., 100 participants, with different IDs for each), there are a few automated ways to generate links. If you're working with an external panel, they will likely have methods to customize URLs for participants (e.g., participant ID), which you can inquire about. Additionally, if you have an Excel of your participants (e.g., name, email, ID, customer type), you can use an excel formula to create the custom URL that you want to send out to each.

💡 TIP: If you want the interview guide to be able to reference the metadata values that you are passing in the URL, you need to check the "pass metadata to AI interviewer" box in your study's General settings. Go to Guide > General settings, and then scroll down to the bottom of the box to check this option (see screenshot below).

Sometimes, you may want to send participant data externally after completion.

For example:

To share participant survey completion data with your panel provider, you can add parameters to the end of your redirect URL in a similar manner to above.

Simply paste your URL redirect in the "Completion URL" box that can be found on the Recruit > Recruit on my own tab.

Simply add ?parameter_name={parameter_name} to the end of the URL you want to direct people to (e.g., websitename.com) and the user completion data will be sent to the survey provider. (Note - do not use "parameter_name" in between the curly brackets - that should be replaced by the actual variable name you're passing out - see the example below)
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Example - completion URL with participant ID​:
For example, let's say you passed in the participant metadata about participant ID like in Section 1 above (using participant-id). The shareable URL had participant IDs captured with the variable name participant-id.

If we want to send that participant ID info externally in the completion URL, we can link it with the following URL: websitename.com?participant-id={participant-id}

We will fill in the {curly brace} section with the metadata value Outset has in its system. No need to set individualized completion links here - the URL will populate automatically for the participant if you set it up in this format!

If you're testing your links and you're still not able to pass data through to the completion URL as expected, there are a couple things that we most commonly see as the root cause:

For any additional questions on passing participant metadata into and out of Outset, feel free to reach out to our team at [email protected]!