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.
Read more to learn about how URLs can be used to pass metadata into and out of Outset.
Why would I want to send participant metadata into Outset?
Sometimes, if you're recruiting participants externally, you may have information about those participants that you want to send to Outset.
For example:
Via your external recruiting, you have defined a participant id and want to link that ID to transcripts within Outset
Via your external recruiting, you have defined two types of users (groupA and groupB) - you want to be able to run custom reporting to analyze responses by these two groups
Via your external recruiting, you have defined two groups of customer of your software product (basic and premium) - you want to pass this information to Outset so that you can ask some extra questions for the premium customer group only
Section 1: How can I send participant metadata into Outset?
To send this data into Outset, all you need to do is adjust the link that participants use to take the survey.
Step 1: Locate the Shareable survey link
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:
Let's say you have a single metadata field you want to send into outset:
participant-id: ID of the participant, which is used in your external recruiting platform
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?
participant-id: ID of the participant, which is used in your external recruiting platform
customer-type: you have two different products (basic and premium) and want to pass information on which group the customer belongs to
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).
Section 2: How can I sending survey completion data externally?
Sometimes, you may want to send participant data externally after completion.
For example:
You want to redirect participants back to your panel provider after survey completion, and include their participant ID for tracking purposes
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.
For example, let's say you passed in the participant metadata like in Section 1 above (using participant-id). If we want to send that externally, 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!
For any additional questions on passing participant metadata into and out of Outset, feel free to reach out to our team at [email protected]!