Configuring Surveys for External Respondents

Vault allows you to send surveys (Checklists) to respondents outside of your Vault. The recipients can then complete the survey and view any reference documents related to it within Vault without having to authenticate. This enables you to quickly gather data from external contacts without using a third-party tool, and the data stays inside Vault.

Survey Example

Randy Researcher at VernBio Pharma wishes to conduct Study 12345 and is considering Two Point Hospital as a possible study site. Prior to selecting Two Point Hospital as a site, VernBio Pharma wants to survey the site to ensure it meets their needs. Rather than using another survey method, Randy wants to accomplish this with Vault alone.

To do so, Randy designs a Checklist to act as the survey, setting it to the Site Survey type. VernBio Pharma then adds their contacts at Two Point Hospital to the appropriate Organization record, including email addresses and Survey Respondent Types.

Next, Randy adds a Site record, in the Candidate state, to Study 12345 and sets Two Point Hospital as the Organization. They then create an entry action for the Qualifying state of the Site and configures it to send surveys. When Randy starts the workflow, Vault sends the Checklist to all contacts with the matching Survey Respondent Type of Study Feasibility Survey.

Setting Up a Survey

  1. Start by designing a Checklist according to the needs of your Study or Outreach Campaign.
  2. Configure and enable the Checklist, assigning it the Checklist Type of either Site Survey or Outreach Survey.
    1. Site Survey has a target object of Site, and Checklist Design records can be set up to match to a specific Study.
    2. Outreach Survey has a target object of Outreach Target, and Checklist Design records can be set up to match to a specific Outreach Campaign.
    3. Vault will only allow one Checklist Design record for each combination of Object Type, Checklist Type, and specified matching field.
  3. Optional: FOr any answers that are considered red flags for additional evaluation, select the appropriate Repsonse Flag. When an answer with a Response Flag is selected on a checklist, Vault copies up the flag to the parent survey record. Reponse Flag is only an option when creating checklist answers.
  4. Optional: Configure custom email senders.
  5. Optional: Select the Survey Sender for this survey.
  6. Configure entry actions and/or user actions on the target object lifecycle using the action Send Checklist Based on Contacts.
    1. The Checklist Type should match the Checklist Type of the desired Checklist.
    2. The Survey Respondent Type should match the same field on your Contact records for the Organization that will receive the survey.
  7. Navigate to Admin > Business Admin.
  8. Select either a Site or Outreach Target, or Create a new record if necessary.
  9. Assign an Organization to the record, or confirm that the current selection is correct.
  10. Ensure that the chosen Organization has Contact Information records for everyone you intend to survey, each having an email address and matching Survey Respondent Type.

Once the above is configured and the action triggered, Vault will send surveys to all Organization Contacts with a valid email address and a matching Survey Respondent Type.

Vault creates Invitation objects for each survey sent. You can configure lifecycles for the Site Survey Invitation and Outreach Survey Invitation objects with their own workflows. We recommend configuring these two user actions:

  • Generate New Link: Sets the existing record to Inactive state, deactivates the associated unique link, and generates a new record for that recipient with a new unique link.
  • Inactivate Link: Sets the existing record to Inactive state and deactivates the associated unique link.

For more about working with active surveys, see Working with Surveys for External Respondents.

Configuring Custom Email Senders

Before you can send surveys from custom email addresses, an Admin must perform the following:

Configuring Survey Reminder Emails

Before you can send survey reminder emails, an Admin must perform the following on the Checklist Design Object: 

  • Enter the Reminder Email Subject text. This is the email subject for the survey reminder email. 
  • Enter the Reminder Email Text. This is the text for the survey reminder email. 
  • Enter the Reminder Notification Text. This is the text for the survey reminder. 

Additionally, an Admin must set the Reminder Notification Frequency on the Site Survey Invitation or Outreach Target Survey Invitation object. This is the frequency, in days, that you wish Vault to send reminder emails.