Managing survey respondents on Snap WebHost

You create a list of survey respondents by:

  • Creating a link to a your database of respondents in Snap
  • Uploading the respondents to Snap WebHost with the published survey.

You can change it later by uploading a new list generated from Snap.

Background

Snap WebHost needs respondent information for sending out email invitations and reminders, and tailoring the emails and questionnaires with any personal data. You can change the respondent list for a survey while the survey is running. This does not delete information about respondents who have already completed the survey.

You can:

  • Add new respondents
  • Change the details of respondents you already have (and possibly add new ones)
  • Delete specified respondents
  • Update the respondent list (adding new respondents, modifying changed respondents and deleting any respondents not present in the new list)

If you are changing the list of respondents, you need to make sure that the new data has the same amount of details about a respondent as the information held on Snap WebHost. If, for example, the column headings change in the database, uploading the data will not work.

Step 1: Changing the database of respondents and updating the database link

If you change your respondent database, you need to update the database link in Snap.

  1. Make the changes in the respondent database.
  2. Select File | Database Link in Snap to display the Database Linkage dialog box.

dl_lnkage_2

  1. Select the link with the updated respondent database.
  2. Click [Run] to generate the new respondent data. The Generate New Respondents File dialog appears.
    Generate New Respondents dialog
  3. Select the folder to save the respondents data and click [OK].

Step 2: Updating the respondent data in Snap WebHost

When you have updated the database link in Snap, you must upload the new respondent data to Snap WebHost.

  1. Log in to Snap WebHost.
  2. Select the survey in the list.
  3. Click on the Respondents tab. You will see a list of current respondents for the survey and their status.
  4. Click the Upload respondents link. The Upload respondents dialog appears.
    upld_resp_droplist
  5. Browse to the zip file you created when you ran the database link in Snap.
  6. Select the type of upload you wish to use. If in doubt, use Update all.
    • Add to add the respondents in the upload to the list (if the respondents are already in the list, they will not be overwritten).
    • Modify to overwrite existing respondents with new information (if the respondents are not already in the list, they will be added).
    • Delete to delete the respondents that you have just uploaded.
    • Update all to change the list of respondents to the list that you have uploaded (new respondents will be added, current respondents will be updated, absent respondents will be deleted).
  7. Click the Upload Archive button.
  8. The respondents list is updated with the new data.

If your survey is live, you may wish to pause the survey while updating respondents and then restart it.

Conclusion

This worksheet has described how to create and update a list of respondents for Snap WebHost.

If you want to know how to set up a database link for respondent login, see the help topic: Setting up a database link for respondents (for seed data, email invites and/or logins).

If you want to use a script to manage your respondents, see Automatic managing of respondents.

If you want to see the reference pages for the database link dialogs, see Database link wizard dialog.

If there is a topic you would like a worksheet on, email to snapideas@snapsurveys.com