How To Pre-Populate One or More Online Survey Form Fields

Sometimes it is helpful to pre-populate an online survey response or respondent data with a pre-specified value. For example, if your organization provides customer services and you want to follow up after completing a customer service incident, it would be helpful to send an online survey invitation to the customer where the service incident number (sometimes referred to as a ticket number) is already entered into the appropriate field when for the customer opens the online survey form.

The following tip describes how to accomplish this using a SurveyGold online survey form. 

About Pre-Populating Form Fields

The ability to pre-specify online survey form field values is provided through an advanced feature that uses a web address convention called a query string. A query string is the part of a web address (URL) that provides data to be passed to the online survey form.

After you have saved your online survey form and placed it on the surveygoldcloud.com website or your website, you append one or more query string names and associated values to the web address (URL) of your online survey form when directing that online survey form to a particular respondent. In practice, the web address (URL) and the specific query string values are generated by an application such as a customer support or help desk management system that tracks your support incidents.

Respondent Data Fields

Here is a list of the query string names for the respondent data fields:

Respondent Data Field Query String Name First Name RF Last Name RL Title RT Company RC Address RA City RY State RS Postal Code RP Phone RH Fax RX Email RE Custom 1 R1 Custom 2 R2 Custom 3 R3 Custom 4 R4

Question Response Fields

In addition to respondent data fields, any fill-in-the-blank question that allows only one response can also have its value assigned via a query string variable. The name of the query string variable is available for copy/paste via the second tab of the question properties sheet. The query string name differs depending upon whether you are using the email or record processing option.

Example: Customer Support Follow-Up

Here is an example that explains how this feature is used. Let's assume you have a customer support tracking application that creates a ticket number for each support incident for a given customer. Let's also assume that you have created a support quality of service online survey form using SurveyGold that uses the first author-defined field to capture the customer support ticket number generated by your customer support tracking application.

You have placed the online survey form on the surveygoldcloud.com website or your website and you want to use your customer support tracking application solution to generate an email to send to the customer at the conclusion of the support incident. You want the email to contain a web address link (URL) to the online survey form, and you want the link to pass the customer support incident number into the online survey form so that it is automatically entered in the first author-defined field. This is how you would accomplish this using SurveyGold:

STEP 1
Use SurveyGold to setup your customer satisfaction questions. Open the survey properties sheet by selecting your survey in the Setup Survey tab and selecting the Properties button in the Groups button bar.

STEP 2
Select the Collect This Respondent Data tab in the survey properties sheet.

STEP 3
Select the checkbox next to the "Custom 1" field and enter the word "Ticket Number" in the prompt just to the right of the "Custom 1" field.

STEP 4
Select OK to save your changes to the survey and to close the survey properties sheet.

STEP 5
Save your survey as an online survey form and publish it to the SurveyGold website or your website.

STEP 6
Have your customer support tracking application create an email that contains a web address (URL) to the online survey form on your site and have it append the support ticket query string and the support ticket value to the the web address (URL).

For example, if your online survey form is located at http://www.mysite.com/supportsurvey.htm and the support ticket number for this support incident is 12345-6, then the web address (URL) generated by your customer support tracking application would be:

http://www.mysite.com/supportsurvey.htm?R1=12345-6

STEP 7
When your respondent selects the link in the email, the online survey form opens and the value 12345-6 appears in the Ticket Number field. Furthermore, the value 12345-6 in the Ticket Number field cannot be altered by the respondent in the online survey form. When the respondent submits their completed form, the value 12345-6 in the Ticket Number field is included in the submitted set of responses.

Specifying Multiple Query String Values

To append multiple query string values, separate them using the ampersand symbol. For example, to pre-populate the responses for the Ticket Number, Customer First Name, Customer Last Name and the response to the first question which contains the service technician's name, your web address (URL) would look like this:

http://www.mysite.com/supportsurvey.htm?R1=1234566&RF=Jane&RL=Smith&Q1_1=John Doe

Note: Q1_1 means "Question 1, Response Value 1".

For More Information

Check out this brief show-and-tell video explaining how this feature works.

View the Video Tutorial