Quarantine properties

Quarantine Name

Unique name of the Quarantine rule that appears in lists and reports.

Description

Text description of the rule.

Condition

Condition that must be met in the record for it to be considered for quarantine by this rule. If the condition is not met, Sampling skips the rule.

The condition expression supports !, AND, OR, and IN operators. For example, the condition Survey_Type IN {1,3}, is true for emails whose Survey_Type field value is 1 or 3. To apply the rule to emails not from the Asia or Pacific Unit groups: !(ug_region IN {'Asia', 'Pacific'}).

Additionally, consider the following:

• Set the condition to true to apply to all emails.

• When an emails meets a Condition and that invitee is already in quarantine, that email is excluded, even if the previous one was for a different Condition.

• When a rule has no Member Unit groups, that rule applies to all Units. When such a rule has a Condition that puts a invitee in quarantine, that invitee remains in quarantine for all subsequent emails, regardless of the other rules because the rule applies to all Units in the company.

• K-fields can be used in conditions with any calculation mode.

See more Condition examples below in Quarantine notes.

Quarantine Days

Number of days before an invitee can be included in a subsequent personalized survey email. Medallia recommends 60 days. A value of 1 means the 24 hours previous to the timestamp of when the current record was created (the new potential email). For example, if the potential email was created at 3 p.m., a value of 1 means since 3 p.m. yesterday, inclusive.

Note: This is based on the Creation date (e_creationdate) unless Completed surveys only is selected.

Quarantine match fields

List of Feedback fields to use for comparison. The potential emails are excluded when any (OR operation) of its field values match the same field’s value in the quarantine records. Typically, only the invitee's email field is used.

Important: The Importer automatically turns all Email-type field values into lowercase. This is to help ensure that comparisons to the same field always match. However, if a user of the Invitations report sends an email and manually enters a mixed-case email address, that does not later match an imported address for the same person, and the subsequent record is not be quarantined.

Additionally, consider the following:

• To create an AND condition, use the Importer to define a concatenation of the two fields, and use the Output field in this list.

• Fields used for quarantine must be indexed, and the Alt Set type must be Text, Autoindexed Text or Email. See E-fields for details.

• When a record is in quarantine, changing the value of the match field(s) to null removes the record from the quarantine pool.

Quarantine pool condition

Condition that must be met for a record to be considered for this quarantine rule. When a record:

• Meets this condition, the rest of the rule options are considered, such as Completed surveys only and Member Unit groups.

  • When an email meets a Condition and that invitee is already in quarantine, the current email is excluded, even if the previous one was for a different Condition.

• Does not meet the condition, the rule is ignored.

Consider only completed surveys in quarantine pool

The rule only applies to respondents who completed a survey, and the survey is in the completed state (e_status = COMPLETED). Completed surveys in the EXCLUDED or AUTO_EXCLUDED states are not caught by this option.

The quarantine period is always based on when the invitee's previous email was created (e_creationdate) compared to the Quarantine Days value. When this option is selected, the rule only applies to surveys that were completed in that period. Surveys created within the quarantine period but not completed get a new email.

Note when records in the same sampling batch (about 5,000 records) share the same ID and conditions, the second record is always excluded, even when there are no COMPLETED records in the database. But, if the second record is in a later sampling batch, it will follow normal processing. For more information, see How sampling works.

Tip: If you use this option, you should also have another rule to handle incomplete or excluded surveys to avoid too many emails to a non-responsive invitee.

Unit Field

The field that identifies the Unit used for comparisons in the Member Unit Groups list. This type of this field is either Unit, or an Alt Set based on the Unit type.

Member Unit Groups

Allows invitees to receive multiple emails within the quarantine period provided the interactions were with different Units or Unit groups.

Normally, when this property is empty, the quarantine for this rule applies to all units in the company. For example, if the invitee was recently sent an email after interacting with any Unit, that invitee is now in the quarantine for the company. By default, the invitee is not sent another email until the quarantine period ends, regardless of which Unit or Unit group the invitee subsequently interacts with.

This list limits the set of already quarantined records to ones within the same Unit group. For example, if the Unit group is Brand, and the invitee's previous interaction was with Brand A, only subsequent interactions with Brand A are excluded. An interaction with Brand B is not part of the quarantine, and so the email is then passed on for further sampling.

All children groups of the Unit group are included. As such, using a top-level group like All Company Units causes each Unit to have its own distinct quarantine. An email is excluded only when the previous interaction was with the same Unit.

Tip: Most companies do not need this feature. Using it can be tricky to diagnose problems with emails. For more information, see Quarantine notes.

Quarantine notes

• When an email meets a Condition and that invitee is already in quarantine, the current email is excluded, even if the previous one was for a different Condition.

• If there are no Member Unit Groups selected, the rule applies to all Units in the company.

• Anonymous (feedless) surveys results can enter quarantine when the quarantine match field is e_email, and the parameter is also e_email.

• Surveys with these statuses do not enter quarantine:

  • JUNKED
  • AWAITING_SAMPLING
  • NOT_SAMPLED

• "Junking" a record removes from the quarantine pool. The next email for that respondent should go out (assuming it passes all other sampling rules).

• When a record is in quarantine, changing the value of the Match Field(s) to null removes the record from the quarantine pool.

• Changing the Match Field on an existing rule to another field does not affect records already in the quarantine pool.

  • When the new field already has data, it is used the next time sampling runs (for new records).

  • There is no need to run a "historical update".

• To test a quarantine:

  • Set the time to a short time period like 1 or 2 days.

  • Modify the Creation date field (e_creationdate) for the test records.

• Monitor both that surveys are being quarantined correctly and that surveys are causing quarantine correctly:

  • Test surveys from every program in your environment as well as those that both meet the condition and those that don’t.

  • Test surveys from outside of the Member Unit Groups.

• When there are no Member Unit Groups selected, inactivating a Unit does not remove invites from the quarantine pool; those invitees remain on the quarantine list.

  • However, when Unit groups are selected, inactivating a Unit in one of those does remove that Unit's emails from the pool.

• Quarantine rules execute on the order they are listed; however, all active rules are checked every time. As such, if one rule has a 100-day quarantine, and another has a 30-day pool, the invitee is quarantined for 100 days.

  Note: Even though the order doesn't matter, arrange the rules in processing order so the the data processing reports reflect the proper rule, and to minimize confusion. For example, put the step sequence number in the rule name, like "1) 90 Day Quarantine (Invited Surveys)" and "2) 365 Day Quarantine (Completed Surveys)".

• For two different survey to have different quarantines, regardless of the Unit the invitee interacted with, create two quarantine rules and set the quarantine Condition to include only records from the particular survey. For example, set one Condition to Survey program = "Survey A" and the other rule's Condition to Survey program = "Survey B".

• To decide if an email falls under the quarantine rule, quarantine compares the email creation timestamp against the timestamp when the sampling process starts, not when it finishes. For example, consider an email created at 3 p.m, with a quarantine rule set to 1 day. The next day an email is created at 2:50 p.m., whose sampling process finishes at 3:10 p.m. In this case, the email is not sent as its creation timestamp (2:50 p.m.) falls within the quarantine period (3 p.m).

• If two feed files process the same invitee in parallel, none of them would qualify for quarantine. Only the Schedule sampling configuration option prevents multiple sampling pipelines to run in parallel. Sampling triggered through Auto importer for a FEED_FILE trigger is processed in parallel with any other trigger.

• Certain devices, browsers, email clients, or operating systems may allow invitees to generate random email aliases (that forward to their primary email address) to keep their personal email address private from an organization. If you are using the Email field to identify invitees to quarantine, and if different email addresses are used for different surveys, it can impact your ability to identify that the surveys are sent for the same invitee.

Member Unit groups example

This example demonstrates how to use Member Units Groups for exceptions to the quarantine pool. Consider these Unit groups:

All Company
   Brand
    Brand A
    Brand B
  Region
    Europe
    North America
      Canada
      United States
      Mexico
  All Individual Units
    Unit 1
    Unit 2
    ... 

By default, when no Unit groups are selected, an invitee interacting with Unit 1 is included in the quarantine pool for the company (assuming they meet the Condition). Interacting with Unit 2 during the quarantine period keeps a second email from being sent.

Selecting a Unit group for the Member Units Groups list creates a quarantine pool for all Units in that Unit group. As such, selecting All Company or All Individual Units has the same effect: each Unit gets its own quarantine pool. An invitee can interact with one Unit 1 and Unit 2 and get emails for both.

When the configuration is changed to include only Region in the Member Units Groups list, an invitee must separately interact with Units in Europe and North America to get multiple emails during the period.

When there are multiple Unit groups in the list, they must have Units in common, that is, the intersection of the Unit groups. Consider the example where Brand and Region are selected for an invitee to get multiple emails only when they visit a different Brand in the same Region, or a different Region with same Brand.

When setting up multiple groups the, the screen shows how many Units meet the criteria:

However, when there are no Units in common, there are no quarantine pools and no Units are affected. Consider an example where there are no Brand A Units in Canada.

In this situation the configuration screen displays a warning to that effect:

Example: Quarantine using multiple Feedback field for all Units

When there are multiple Match Fields, the field values are OR'd: if either field matches a record already in quarantine, the current record is excluded from getting an email.

To create an AND operation,use the Importer to concatenate the fields into a new Feedback field. This example concatenates Email and Segment into a new field called Email segment (e_email_segment).

If only email were used as a match field, both 1001 and 1002 would be quarantined. By using the concatenated field, only 1002 is quarantined.

Example: Different quarantines for different regions

The following scenarios and configuration options demonstrate the different results that can happen. When viewing the results, remember:

• When no rules apply, the invitee is not in quarantine.

• When an email meets a Condition and that invitee is already in quarantine, the current email is excluded, even if the previous one was for a different Condition.

• When a rule has no Member Unit Groups, that rule applies to all Units.

  • When such a rule has a Condition that puts an invitee in quarantine, that invitee remains in quarantine for all subsequent emails, regardless of the other rules.

In this example, a hospitality company implements a 60-day quarantine for Asia and Pacific regions, and 90-day quarantine for all other regions. An invitee stays at two of the units within a few days of each other. Here are a few configuration options and the results they yield:

Configuration: Option 1

Configuration: Option 2

Configuration: Option 3

Configuration: Option 4