Anonymous surveys

Anonymous surveys, previously known as Feedless surveys, are generated with no prior knowledge of who the survey taker is. Anonymous surveys differ from personalized surveys — feed-based — where the survey taker is reached based on prior existing data and access the survey directly via email.

An Anonymous survey is neither distributed by nor associated with an Invitation email. Instead of clicking a link from an Invitation email, survey takers reach the survey either by:

  • Manually entering the survey URL in their browser address.
  • Clicking a live link on a web page.
  • Responding to a prompt on a web page that takes them to the survey.

Anonymous surveys use Live links to deliver the survey. To be an effective survey, it is important to identify the unit the individual interacted with. Usually the information is passed to the survey as parameters in the URL. An anonymous survey might also request survey takers provide some identifying information, such as selecting the facility or person they interacted with, or by providing a unique code printed on a sales receipt.

Anonymous surveys in the Distribution tab of the survey details pane.

Important: When using the same survey definition for both anonymous and personalized surveys, use a separate version of the survey definition for each. Using a single survey definition version for both kinds of surveys can cause problems
Restriction: You cannot open Anonymous surveys in an iFrame due to Cross-origin resource sharing (CORS) security restriction.

Complete these steps to create a live link:

  1. From Surveys screen, select the survey you want to send and, on the survey details pane, click Manage next to Live links.

    Select Manage next to Live links on the survey details pane

  2. Select New link.

  3. Confirm the survey version or choose another from the available dropdown options.

  4. Give the live link a unique name. For example, setting the link name to contact-center-v2 makes the Live link URL for the survey https://survey.medallia.com/?contact-center-v2.

    Restriction: Live links can have a maximum of 22 characters, and can include letters, numbers, and hyphens (-).
  5. Set the look and feel of the survey by selecting a design, and optionally, a variation. If none is chosen, no style is assigned to the survey.

  6. Optionally, select Add unit parameter to tie the live link (and the anonymous survey) to a particular unit. Select None needed if not unit is required for this link. For more information, see Create and manage parameters.

  7. Optionally, click Show advanced settings to block the Anonymous survey link and add a referrer. For more information, see Survey link screen.

    Additionally, if using the live link for Employee experience with an authentication method, select Personalized link for authentication. For more information, see Authenticated surveys.

  8. Click Save.

    Steps to create a new Live link.

    Important: When the survey uses parameters that condition the layout, try adding different values manually to the end of the URL to verify they work as expected. Avoid submitting the survey, as any answer is stored as data in your instance. If you submit surveys, work with your Medallia expert to junk them.

    For more information, see Recent surveys reports.

    Tip: When navigating from Medallia the network space, you can manually add &debug=spec to the end of the link to open it in debug mode.

Alternatively, you can create a live link from a survey version. For more information, see Create live survey links.

Tip: You can shorten the URL by directly providing the Live link to the URL shortening vendor (such as Bitly).

Manage Live links

From All live links screen, choose a live link and click Edit to modify the survey link associated version or design. Click More vertical icon the details pane menu to re-push or delete the live link.
Warning: Changing the survey Live link impacts all published links, so make sure you update all instances of the Live link.

Parameters screen

Parameters are a mechanism for passing data to an Anonymous surveys for the purpose of providing identifying information, such as an order number, receipt code, or Unit ID. A parameter is a name/value pair appended to the URL that the survey taker uses to access the survey. Experience Cloud takes the parameter value and maps it as the answer to a question (in a Feedback field) or as the value of other information about the unit or interaction (in an Event field) in the survey. In a personalized survey, this information would be provided in the feed-file for the Invitation email. 

Here is an example of a URL that includes two parameters, store_id and pos, and each parameter is assigned a value. The list of parameters begins with a question mark (?), and each parameter is separated by an ampersand (&): https://survey.medallia.com/orion?store_id=943061&pos=W308752

Parameters are defined at a survey level and affect all survey versions. As a result, creating a parameter and making it required makes it required for all the versions of that survey.

Parameter values are stored together with the survey data and can also be used together with conditions to customize the survey when loaded.

Layer 1 1 2 3

  1. Parameters tab
  2. Details pane
  3. Details pane menu

Details pane

Click a link parameter to reveal its details pane, which shows the following:

Field
The Feedback or Event field that this parameter maps to in a survey. The field is usually hidden from the survey taker.
Alternative Mapping
How the value in the URL maps to the possible values that the Field is based on. 
  • Map by name — The value is the name of the element. When there are duplicate names in the same choice set, Experience Cloud picks the one with lowest priority number. 

  • Map by sequence — The value is the element's sequence number. This both reduces the length of the survey URL and better masks these parameters from survey takers.

  • Map by unit identifier — The Choice set has a Unit data type, and the parameter value is a Unit identifier.

Default Value
Value for a parameter when it is not already included in the URL because either the parameter or the value is missing (such as parameter=). For example, to set the default language when there are multiple languages in the language dropdown, set lang= and the value is the language locale, such as Spanish (Mexico).
Required
Whether or not the parameter value is required, either in the URL or as a Default value. When there is no value for a required parameter, the survey taker sees an error message displayed.

Details pane menu

SelectMore vertical icon the details pane menu to:
Edit parameter
Changes the associated field or the alternative mapping.
Warning: Changing a parameter may impact live links.
Delete parameter
Deletes the parameter. Attempting to take a survey that includes the deleted parameter should return an error screen.

Create and manage parameters

Complete these steps to create a parameter:

  1. From Surveys screen, select a survey and, on the survey details pane, click click Manage next to Parameters.

    Click Manage next to Parameters on the survey details pane.

  2. Click New link parameter to create a parameter.

  3. Give your parameter a name, which is the one used in the URL.
    Note: The name is case-sensitive, and must start with a letter followed by any combination of letters, digits, or hyphen (-), for a maximum of 22 characters. Consider using all lowercase names for surveys where survey takers must manually enter in their browser address. In this example URL, orion-feedless and store_id are both parameters.

    https://survey.medallia.com/?orion-feedless&store_id=943061

  4. Map this parameter to an existing field so that the value of the parameter is assigned to it. For example, having a parameter named country that's mapped to the Event field Country (e_country), the field is populated by any value that arrives for the country parameter in the survey URL. Note that the field chosen can only be mapped to one parameter. For example, you can use Country to either map it to the parameter country or Country, but not both.

  5. Choose how the value in the URL maps to the possible values that the survey field is based on, which may be either by name, sequence/value pair, or Unit ID.

  6. Select or confirm the survey the parameter is part of.

  7. Enter the default value the parameter has when it is not part of the URL. For more information, see Details pane.

  8. Optionally, select if the parameter is included in the URL, such as https://survey.medallia.com/?country=US.

  9. Optionally, edit the survey so that certain elements or groups are only displayed when the field that you mapped to the parameter has a certain value. For example, the condition in a question can be Country = US, in which case that group is only displayed when the URL that opens the survey contains Country=US.

  10. Click Save.

  11. Navigate to the survey version that uses the parameter and select Sync version so that the parameter is used in live surveys. For more information, see Synchronize versions.

    Steps to create a new parameter.

Manage parameters

From Parameters screen, choose a parameter and click Manage to edit it, or clickMore vertical icon the details pane menu to either edit or delete it.

Tips

  • The parameters to add must already exist when creating and publishing an Anonymous surveys. If you change the definition of a survey's parameter, sync the survey again.

  • Do not include private survey taker's data in the parameter value. There is no way to encrypt or mask the data.

  • Keep parameter names short to reduce the length of the URL.

  • Avoid passing more than five parameters due to the length limit of survey URLs. If your survey needs more than five parameters, consider redesigning the survey as a personalized survey instead.

  • Only pass parameters associated with the survey, such as identifiers and values to set conditions and design purposes.Additional metadata (to be associated with the record) should come later through an appended file.

  • Parameter fields with Date and Date/Time data type must follow yyyy-MM-dd (ISO 8601) and yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss (ISO 8601) and yyyy-MM-ddTHH:mm:ssZ (RFC-3339).

  • Do not use certain parameter strings, such as non-alphanumeric or - _ .~ characters, since they are encoded and appear as special characters (for example, &lt and &gt).

Warning: These are reserved parameters of the Survey engine and cannot be used to pass data:
  • esid
  • surveyid
  • invite-opened
  • reject
  • screenReaderEnabled
  • enc
  • latitude longitude
  • themeroller
  • forcest
  • t
  • sessionId
  • ballotVer
  • nodeId
  • hmac
Experience Cloud does not validate if any of these parameters are included in the survey, which can result in different type of errors when the survey is live.

Update Anonymous surveys

Live links match a specific version of a survey. To change the content of the survey that the link takes to (for example, to fix a typo), you may:

Update a version from draft

  1. Make the changes in the survey editor.

  2. FromMore vertical icon the survey details pane menu, identify the version that is associated with the Live link to apply the changes you have made.

  3. ClickMore vertical icon the version menu and choose Update version from draft. For more information, see Update a version from draft.

  4. Optionally, on the Live link used for the Anonymous surveys, click Re-push survey link. For more information, see Managing Live links.

Create a new version

  1. Make changes in the survey editor and create a new version.

  2. From the survey details pane, click Manage link next to Live links.

  3. On the the link to modify, clickMore vertical icon its menu and select Edit survey link.

  4. In the Survey version field, pick the newly created version.

  5. Click Save.

Note: You cannot edit the name of a link that has already been created, as it maps directly to the survey URL. To change a link name, first you must create a new link and then delete the old one.

Unit and survey takers' data from Anonymous surveys

Surveys distributed via Personalized invitations are generated with prior knowledge about the unit, the company, and potential respondents; however, most of this information is not available to Anonymous surveys. It is recommended that the survey provides some identifying information such as the Unit ID, but could also include a transaction ID, receipt code, survey takers' contact information, etc. This can be either done through survey parameters in the URL or entered manually by the survey taker when answering survey questions.

Tip: Even if a Unit is set to be inactive, it still appears as an option on Anonymous surveys that ask survey takers to pick the Unit from a dropdown menu. A possible work around is to validate unit selections to show an error message when picking an inactive unit. However, Units should not be deactivated when possible.
To map the Unit to the main Unit field (such as e_unitid), add a JavaScript validation to the content element referencing the Unit including the following code:
//Logic to get unit 
var unit = fields.get('q_prop_select_unit'); 

//Set Unit ID 
fields.set('e_unitid',unit); 

When an Anonymous survey has a Data field type that is only accessed via a JavaScript validation using the fields.get() function, you must refer to that Data field type elsewhere in the survey (such as in a non-displayed Text element) to populate the Data field type value, which otherwise is always null.