Could I create a non-anonymous evaluation survey linked to/embedded within individual Tier 1 profiles that we can send out and have participants fill out themselves that’s not through connect portal (something we haven’t implemented)?
I don’t think we can utilize things like lookup-lists due to PHI/HIPPA (though I’ve only been somewhat getting into our options and am not sure if client-side would even have access to lookup lists, just wanted to be transparent of the options I’ve been looking through)
If connect portal is the only option, I tried creating a form and it does not appear on there 😰 I guess I have some studying to do, because only very basic forms appear and I don’t know how to make other forms eligible to send yet...I’m guessing it’s an ‘internal only’ function or something with permissions.
Any help/guidance is appreciated as I navigate this!
Best answer by AnnieNovacek
Hi Vanessa, that’s a great question, and I have a couple thoughts for you.
1. Survey Tier 2 Via Connect
The best practice for a non-anonymous survey that you want to send to Participants to fill out on their own would be a Tier 2 form under their Tier 1 made available via Connect. This automatically links it to the person filling it out.
It doesn’t take too many steps to set up Connect, so if that’s your blocker, I would consider checking it out. The main requirement is that each person you want to reach has to have an email address, even if you are just going to send the survey via text message. Here is a Connect training I hope you find helpful.
When it comes to making forms available via Connect, it’s possible you are missing a step within permissions where you need to grant at least one internal user role access to that form under the Program you want to use within Connect to make it available. Then when you create a Participant Type, you will set Form Permissions and grant access to that form. From there, you can either tell Participants to go log in to Connect to fill it out or send a direct message with a link.
2. Survey Tier 1 Via Intake, Then Linked
An alternative to this setup not using Connect would be to create a Tier 1 for your survey and share it via an Intake form link. To make it non-anonymous, just be sure to ask for identifying details like Name, Email Address, etc. More on Intake forms here.
Note, when creating a Tier 1 form you will have to set at least one field as Duplicate check. If this survey is only going to be filled out by each person once, you can use the Name field or Email, etc. If you expect people to fill it out more than once, you will need to choose something else. You could do Name and Date of Submission to make sure Apricot doesn’t block more than one submission over time.
Then you can link the submissions back to their Tier 1 profile already in your Apricot. The linking part would be handled by you or your team, not the person filling out the survey to maintain data privacy (Linking fields aren’t supported in Intake anyway so they won’t show for the Participant).
Hi Vanessa, that’s a great question, and I have a couple thoughts for you.
1. Survey Tier 2 Via Connect
The best practice for a non-anonymous survey that you want to send to Participants to fill out on their own would be a Tier 2 form under their Tier 1 made available via Connect. This automatically links it to the person filling it out.
It doesn’t take too many steps to set up Connect, so if that’s your blocker, I would consider checking it out. The main requirement is that each person you want to reach has to have an email address, even if you are just going to send the survey via text message. Here is a Connect training I hope you find helpful.
When it comes to making forms available via Connect, it’s possible you are missing a step within permissions where you need to grant at least one internal user role access to that form under the Program you want to use within Connect to make it available. Then when you create a Participant Type, you will set Form Permissions and grant access to that form. From there, you can either tell Participants to go log in to Connect to fill it out or send a direct message with a link.
2. Survey Tier 1 Via Intake, Then Linked
An alternative to this setup not using Connect would be to create a Tier 1 for your survey and share it via an Intake form link. To make it non-anonymous, just be sure to ask for identifying details like Name, Email Address, etc. More on Intake forms here.
Note, when creating a Tier 1 form you will have to set at least one field as Duplicate check. If this survey is only going to be filled out by each person once, you can use the Name field or Email, etc. If you expect people to fill it out more than once, you will need to choose something else. You could do Name and Date of Submission to make sure Apricot doesn’t block more than one submission over time.
Then you can link the submissions back to their Tier 1 profile already in your Apricot. The linking part would be handled by you or your team, not the person filling out the survey to maintain data privacy (Linking fields aren’t supported in Intake anyway so they won’t show for the Participant).
Thank you so much, I was exploring the linking feature this past week and this makes it much simpler! And I will sign up for the training right away. The connect portal might be what we have to do in the end, but we’d rather participants not be required to create a profile if we can help it. We are piloting this with a small program, but we have larger programs and any barrier might lower our survey participation rate.
Again, thank you for your time and thoughtful answers
Happy to help Vanessa! I love being able to offer options.
One note about Connect: Very little action is required of your Participants to use the portal. Your team manages their “account” by filling out a Tier 1 Profile within your Apricot (which I assume you already have for most if not all of these folks). Then you enable which Participants you want to be able to receive messages and/or access the portal (and which forms they can see, fill out, update). You can send out a survey Tier 2 form to be filled out without the Participant having created their login for Connect. I agree with reducing barriers to getting responses, and direct messages from Connect put the survey link directly in their inbox or text if you have cell numbers.
As a program who uses Connect regularly in many different ways, I’ll just say sending blank forms to participants is probably the easiest and most reliable part of Connect. If you send the form in a direct message, they don’t even need to set up a password. They just need to have an account created by an Apricot admin. A lot of our staff use this feature. Particularly because you can send the links via text so they’re less likely to get lost/burried.
