Open Question

An Open Question requests information from the respondent as either

  • Free-form text
  • Phone number
  • Email address
  • Image
  • Video
  • Audio

For all except the free-form text, the requested information has a format or file-type. The respondent must provide the response in the correct format, such as an email address in the form "name@domain.com", or the system will reject it and reprompt for the response. If the respondent repeatedly fails to provide the target format, the system replies with a custom message and gives up requesting the Open Question.

Here is an example of free-form text:

An open question asking "Tell us about your experience"

Warning: Never change the data type once a conversation is live. Answers to questions are stored in Medallia Experience Cloud as Question Fields (Q-Fields), and each of which has a data type — also known as an AltSet or Choice set — that defines what data are acceptable in the response. Changing the data type of a live conversation makes existing answers invalid and unavailable for reporting. For more information about the tyoes, see Data types.

Binary-file responses

When the response is an binary file (image, video, or audio), the system stores the file and puts a link to the file in the field value. In a report, the field displays the link. Users can click the link to view or listen to the file.

Important: In Medallia Experience Cloud the question is stored in a field whose name looks like this: q_fieldname. The link is stored in a field named q_fieldname_hyperlink. That field must specifically be added to reports by the report designer.

If the respondent responds with multiple uploads, only the last one sent by the respondent is included in the hyperlink field. Though links to all of the uploads are stored in the "raw" field.

Adding an Open Question to the conversation

  1. In the Conversation editor, click Add Dialog.

  2. In the Dialog editor, choose Open Question as the Dialog type.

    For the Dialog type, select the Open Question option

    Important: The Question or Question Name becomes the field name of the associated question stored in the database. The name always begin with q_ followed by the question or name. For example, How did you like your stay? becomes a field named q_how_did_you_like_your_stay. The database has a limit of 63 characters, which means the first 61 characters of the Question Name must be unique within your company.

  3. Provide the Settings that identify the expected response type, and what to do when the respondent fails to provide the expected response.

    1. For the Response Type:

      • Choose None for free-form text.

      • For all other types, choosing the type reveals type-specific settings. The options expect the result to be text in a specific format (such as email and phone number), or a captured or up-loaded image, video, or audio. Choosing Any allows the response to be any of the expected types.

    2. Retry settings specify what to do when system does not recognize the respondent's response as being valid for the dialog type.

      • Maximum number of retries — Count of times the respondent may submit a malformed answer before the conversation gives up and sends an error message. For example, if the response is expecting an email address, but the respondent submits a name without the @, the respondent gets this number of retries before failing.

      • Retry message — Text of the message to send when the response was was invalid. This message repeats each time the respondent provides an invalid response, except the last time (based on the maximum number of retries).

      • Exceeded maximum number of retries message — Text of the message to send when the respondent repeatedly fails to provide the expected response.

  4. (optional) Add the 'no_done' label to limit the question to appear only once. Otherwise, after submitting an answer when the label is missing, the respondent is re-prompted and they may replace the text from their previous answer.

  5. Optionally, add pre-conditions that determine whether or not to present this dialog to the respondent. For more information, see Condition rules.

  6. Optionally, add post-conditions that determine whether to say an acknowledgment message or navigate to another dialog or conversation. For more information, see Condition rules.

  7. Click Add Dialog to save the dialog to the conversation.

    Optionally, Add another dialog to the conversation.

    1. When finished, click Add Dialog.

    2. Click Cancel to close the Dialog editor.

  8. When finished, click Save.

You can now add another dialog to the conversation.