Sharing a Survey URL

In addition to using the survey email invitation feature to reach out to specific individuals, you can share your survey with potential respondents via URL. You can use the survey URL as a supplement to invitation emails or it can be used as the sole method of providing survey access.

Unlike the individual links embedded in survey invitation emails, this neutral URL is not associated with a user id. Because of this, there are important differences when sharing via this URL.

To share survey access via the survey link URL:

Follow the steps to launch a new survey.

Set your Preferences before launching, to ensure that you have selected an appropriate survey close parameter.
If you are ALSO planning to invite response via email, be sure to follow the steps to create a mailing list of recipients and customize the email message.

After completing the Launch step, return to the Launch & Manage Surveys home page.
Locate your survey in the list and click Share Survey URL.
The survey URL is displayed in a Share Survey URL pop-up window.

Click a radio button to indicate whether you want to copy the URL as a link (default selection) or in HTML format.

Highlight the URL in the text box and copy it (depending on your browser, you might use CTRL-C, a right click of your mouse, etc.)
Close the Share Survey URL window.

Paste the URL into a document, notepad, etc., to save it.

If the desired final location is available at this time (for example if you are placing this link in a website page and your website editor is open in another window) you can paste the link directly to that location.

Important differences when sharing via URL

There are certain factors that may cause you to decide against using the survey link a delivery option:

All survey link respondents are "anonymous." Due to the lack of user id information in the shared survey URL, ALL those who respond to a survey via the URL are, by nature, "anonymous" to the survey tool, even if you select "Visible Identities as your anonymity preference.

Is there another way to collect this information?

If demographic information is critical to the understanding of survey results, you can include relevant questions in the survey form and mark them questions "required."

Be aware, however, that:

names collected in this way will not appear as "names" in your survey reports and cannot be used as search criteria
the respondent may choose to answer demographic questions falsely and your results may be skewed

Multiple responses per person

 Since no identifying information is stored in the survey URL, there is nothing to prevent an individual from responding to a single survey multiple times.

Impact on Close Date

The preference setting to close a survey "when all email recipients have responded" does not apply to anyone who receives the shared survey link URL. Since there are no limits to how this URL can shared, it would be impossible to determine whether "all" had responded.

Statistics cannot be collected

The Send/Unsent/Bounce Back/Opt-out statistics on the Recipients page refer only to survey email invitations, which can be monitored via the user ids.