In this step you can define and schedule reminder messages to your target groups.These messages will be sent only to persons who have been invited to participate in a survey but didn't yet participate. When sending out the reminders, the system checks who has participated.
All respondents in a target group must be invited
The reminder messages will only be sent to target groups were everybody has been invited. Reminders will not be sent when a sample size has been set. This is because the system itself will sent out messages to reach the desired sample size. You can only access this tab when one of the selected target groups has been invited completely. Inviting everybody in a target group is done by checking the All checkbox, when you specify target groups for a project.
Figure 25: The overview of scheduled reminders.
A reminder message can be defined when defining a project, or added later when the project is already active. Multiple reminder messages can be defined.
To define a new reminder, click the button Add. A window appears where you can define your message. Just like the original email invitation you must enter an email adress, a subject and a message with at least the <URL> tag.
Reminder nature
Besides this you need to schedule when the message will be sent. You can define the number of days, weeks or months after which the reminder should be sent (relative to the date when the original invitation was sent out). The remind nature is default set to Once. If the project is a continuous project, the reminder nature can be set to Repetitive. This means that the reminders will be sent with an interval that is specified by the value that is filled out in the 'Remind After' field.
Figure 26: Reminder message.
Reminder status
When a reminder message is still waiting to be sent, the status is Scheduled. You can delete or inactivate scheduled messages. You delete a message by selecting it in the reminder message overview and clicking the button Delete. You can inactivate a reminder message by selecting it in the overview and clicking the button Edit. The message will appear in a seperate window. Now you can inactivate the message by changing the status to Inactive and clicking OK. An inactivated message will not be sent. At any time the inactive status can be changed to scheduled. Also inactive messages can be deleted.
When the system is sending out reminder email messages, the status will be In progress. After the messages have been sent, the status changes to Completed. If it is a repetitive reminder message, the completed status will be changed to Scheduled at the beginning of a new interval.
Remind now
If you want to send out a new reminder immediately, then choose the status Remind Now when creating a reminder. Each reminder that has the status Scheduled can also be sent out immediately. To send a reminder immediately, select it, and click the edit button. Set the status of the reminder to Remind Now. If the original invitations are over, the reminder will be sent immediately. The status of the reminder will automatically be set to In progress, once the sending has started.