Autofill

Autofill feature allows you to prepopulate survey responses automatically before sending a survey to target respondents. This is commonly used to prepopulate some of survey questions on behalf of respondents to save respondents time. Or you can track respondents if prepopulate data to the hidden question.

To use this option follow the steps below:

1. Create .csv (comma separated values) Data File in UTF-8 encoding containing information you want to import. For details go to Export E-mail Addresses From Data Sources.
   Keep in mind that:
   • This file must contain 'Email' field. You can use only latin alphabet and numbers (a-z, A-Z, 0-9) for correct email address syntax; do not use spaces or any other symbols (like & $ ; etc..) Your survey will be sent to email addresses indicated in this file field.
   • If you later send this survey manually to email addresses indicated in the data source file, the autofilled information associated with them will be removed.
   • This file must not contain fields which you do not want to import to your survey including field headings (such as 'Email', 'Name' etc.), page breaks etc.
   • Only commas, semicolons and tabulation can serve as delimiters/list separators (If your file contains other separators you may need to change Regional Settings on your computer).
   • If you autofill questions of 'Multi-Line' or 'Single-Line' types and comment fields of appropriate questions no more than 1024 characters will be imported, characters that exceed the limit will be cut off.
2. Select a survey to import the Data to.
3. Bring the survey questions in correspondence with fields of Data File you are going to import:
   • Keep in mind that you may import only one response per question, if it is not of 'Single Line Text with Pre-Format Options', 'Check All That Apply' and 'List Box' type.
   • To autofill 'Single Line Text with Pre-Format Options' question type, use a separate answer line for each field to be imported. For example, you can have only one question to import 'demographic' information (name, email address, age etc.). The order of the questions and single line answer choices must be the same as the order of fields in the Data file.
   • Sometimes when you export information from Data Sources, certain fields are automatically broken up into parts. For example, 'Name' field some times is represented by two fields: 'Last name' and 'First name'. In this case you need to import first and last name as responses to two different questions.
   • To autofill 'Check All That Apply', and 'List Box' question types, specify the responses as 0 or 1 (0 - unselected answer, 1 - selected answer).
   • If you use question type 'Dropdown Box' the answer choices must strictly correspond to the content of the fields in Data File. The fields in Data File in the mentioned question cannot be empty. For example, if you are going to import information on respondents' gender and you set answer choices as 'Male' and 'Female', the 'Gender' field of your Data File should contain only one of these two values.
   • When autofilling 'Numeric Allocation' type of question number of columns within a CSV data file should strictly correspond to the number of answer choices within a question. You do not need to autofill 'Total' field as it is calculated automatically when respondents submit their surveys.
   • It is recommended you put the autofilled questions in the beginning of your survey.
4. Go to the 'Surveys > Launch' page.
5. Click Go next to the 'Email Survey Distribution' option.
6. Choose 'Import email list for bulk survey distribution' option under the second step and click the Format Data File button.
7. Specify format of the data file to be imported. To do it on the 'Format Data File' page simply select questions responses to which you want to import and move them from the 'Accessible Survey Questions' text box into the 'Autofill These Questions' text box.
8. Indicate the number of Email and password fields (columns) in the 'Enter field number for email address and password' boxes and click the Save button.
9. Select the 'Overwrite' option if you wish to allow your respondents to edit prepopulated data. If this option is not selected, your respondents will be able to see autofilled data but will not be able to edit it (it concerns only questions that are not hidden).
   Note, if the question is hidden, the Overwrite option will automatically unhide the corresponding question on 'Questions' page. You should first apply settings on 'Format Data File' page and after that activate the Hide option on 'Questions' page.
10. Click the Save button to confirm that you want to import data to your survey questions.
11. Make sure that autofill columns strictly correspond to fields of the Data File.
12. Click Back to return to the 'Email Survey' page.
13. Now you can import your Data File.

Let us take a look at a short example: