Custom survey IDs

Custom survey IDs are unique survey IDs that are easier to read than standard survey IDs, and are for using on surveys where the respondent manually enters the ID on a Landing Page.

Respondents enter a custom Survey ID in a field on the page

Custom survey IDs are intended for physical invitations delivered on paper or on a comment card and they have the following characteristics:

  • The IDs begin with a prefix that is unique to the company; a company may have multiple prefixes, but they must each be unique within all Medallia Experience Cloud companies.

  • The prefix is followed by a random sequence of lowercase letters and numbers (excluding vowels, lowercase G, J, and L, and the numbers 1 and 0).

  • The sequence is typically broken in intervals separated by a character to make the ID easy to read and enter.

A typical custom ID looks may be prefix-a2c-4f6-h8.

Aside from the format, custom IDs and standard IDs have the same functionality, and both are stored in the Survey ID (a_surveyid) field.

Properties

Using Custom Survey IDs
Activates support for custom survey IDs, and activates the Landing pages screen.
Survey Condition

Identifies specific Invitation emails to receive a custom ID. Leave blank to assign the IDs to all Invitation emails.

The easiest way to use this condition is to assign a value to an Event field during import. For example, there might be a test to see if there is a postal address and no email address. In that case the field could be a flag to indicate the invite needs a custom ID. Then, the condition could be: e_needs_custom_survey_id = 1.

Tip: It is best to use Event fields, Unit data fields, or Unit groups data fields; K-fields may also be used. The important point is the field(s) must have a value when the record finishes Sampling, so Feedback and System fields are not good candidates. The field Data type must be a sequence (minimally) with values of 0 and 1, though the best option is the Yes/No Data type.
Prefix

Unique identifier for this custom ID pattern. The prefix is prepended to the survey ID (this tells the platform the ID is custom and who it belongs to).

The prefix value must:

  • End with a hyphen or dash.

  • Be unique across all Experience Cloud companies. The best option is to use some variation of the company name, like orion-rigel-.

  • Match the Survey Prefix property for the survey on the Landing pages screen.

  • Be lowercase text; avoid numerals, especially 1 and 0.

This is an example of an ID with the prefix orion-: orion-a2c-4f6-g8.

Important: Do not confuse the custom ID Prefix with the Survey ID that appears in the URL to the landing page, though they may share the same value. In this example, orionSurveyID is the Survey ID to the landing page: survey.medallia.com/?orionSurveyID

To directly access the survey, use the complete custom ID, including the Prefix. In this example, orionPrefix is the prefix: survey.medallia.com/?orionPrefix-a2c-4f6-g8.

The later example bypasses the landing page and goes directly to the first page of the survey.

The complete ID, including prefix, shows up in the Survey batches report.

the Survey By Unit property shows the units associated with the selected survey

Length

Required. Length of the custom ID sequence, excluding separators and the length of the Prefix. You must assign a value, as the default is zero. Select a safe length (8 is usually a good length as it gives over 73 billion possible unique IDs). The value must be:

  • Long enough to avoid running out of IDs, and to make it hard to guess an ID (the values are assigned randomly, not sequentially).

  • Short enough to be convenient for respondents to enter.

This is an example of an ID with 8 characters: prefix-a2c-4f6-g8.

Separator

Character to insert at regular intervals to make the ID easier to read (using a hyphen or dash). The length of the interval is specified by Separator Spacing.

Omit this value to exclude separators.

Separator Spacing

Count of characters between Separator characters.Zero (0) excludes separators.

Intervals of 3 or 4 are usually good lengths.

This is an example of an ID with a 4-character separator: prefix-a2c4-f6g8.

Mix custom and standard survey IDs

When the Feed file contains email and non-email invites, use Record-level sampling operation to direct the records to the proper (post) Sampling operation:

  • Survey emails use SEND_INVITES to generate the emails.

  • Non-email invitations use PUSH_TO_SURVEY_ENGINE to send the record to the Survey engine without generating an email.

During import the specification:

  • Set an Event field as the flag used in the Condition of the custom survey ID specification.

  • Set Sampling Operation field to either to either SEND_INVITES or PUSH_TO_SURVEY_ENGINE.

In sampling, set the (post) sampling operation to RECORD_LEVEL.

Export the non-email records using a condition that includes:

  • The Event field flag.

  • The Record creation data (e_record_creationdate) field has a value, which is the date and time when the record is ready for export.