Bulk email service providers

Bulk email service providers solve the task of sending out a massive amount of emails. Survey Solutions may utilize such a service provider to deliver email invitations for CAWI surveys to the respondents. At the moment the following providers are supported:

• Amazon SES;
• Twilio SendGrid;
• Other senders that support Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP).

You don’t have to use the above services to conduct a CAWI survey, but in that case (just as it was in versions prior to 19.04) it will be your responsibility to deliver the links for the interviews to individual respondents. The use of the bulk email service providers streamlines this process.

Configuring SMTP server as an email service provider

Servers providing Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) service can be used to send out messages from Survey Solutions. The technical description for the SMTP has passed several revisions and users may refer to e.g. RFC 8314 for details.

The settings specific to using SMTP are described below, while the other settings common to other service providers are described in the article Bulk email service providers.

Host - the address of the server (may also be referred to as the SMTP server, or outgoing mail server, etc. in your provider’s documentation).

Configuring Amazon SES as an email service provider

Amazon provides a number of services (free and paid) that may be of interest to the application developer. Here we are specifically interested in utilizing the Simple Email Service (SES) from within Survey Solutions for mass email sending.

Usage of this service may cost you money. Make sure you understand all charges, limits and policies before utilizing this service.

Amazon Simple Email Service is available at the following address: https://aws.amazon.com/ses

If you are already an Amazon AWS user, you can login to your Management Console right away. Otherwise you will need to create a new AWS account.

Webpage Templates

Survey Solutions presents several web pages to the respondents to the web surveys (CAWI). These pages may need to be customized at the web interview setup page: Menu → Survey Setup → Questionnaires → YourQuestionnaire → Web interview setup.

Changes made to these templates take immediate effect: any new page of the corresponding type will be shown using the most recently saved template.

Text formatting

Where formatting is supported it is entered using the following toolbar:

Email Templates

Survey Solutions can send email notifications to the respondents to the web surveys (CAWI). These notifications can be configured at the web interview setup page: Menu → Survey Setup → Questionnaires → YourQuestionnaire → Web interview setup.

Survey Solutions server automatically determines, which notifications need to be sent out to the respondents. Every hour the notifications of the type marked with ^ in the table below are sent out, if a bulk email service provider has been set up.

Web Interviewing

In addition to CAPI surveys on Android tablets, Survey Solutions provides two distinct possibilities:

• Interviewing: Interviewers conduct interviews using the web interface (without a tablet);
• Self-enumeration: Respondents fill out interviews in the browser.

The difference is essential:

• In the first case the person filling out the interview is a known member of the team, has an account created in the system, assigned to a team of a certain supervisor and so on. We use this mode when e.g. we set up a call centre and our interviewers don’t physically travel to the respondent, so don’t need a mobile device (tablet) or to work offline (disconnected), but collect multiple interviews and report to a certain supervisor;

  October 30, 2020

Configuring Sendgrid as an email service provider

SendGrid is a bulk email service provider that can be used in Survey Solutions for delivering invitations for CAWI surveys as an alternative to Amazon SES: https://sendgrid.com/

Usage of this service may cost you money. Make sure you understand all charges, limits and policies before utilizing this service.

SendGrid reqires you to have a domain and confirm yourself as a domain owner. The sending address must belong to this domain. For example, if you want to send emails from name@site.com you must confirm yourself as the owner of the site.com.

Customize web interview messages

Web interviews conducted with Survey Solutions contain reasonable default messages suitable for many surveys. But if the default messages are not suitable for a certain purpose, they can be customized in the web survey setup dialog at the Survey Solutions Headquarters:

For every parameter select if you wish to display a built-in default message, or a custom one, and if so, provide your custom (formatted) text of such a message. You can use the formatting toolbar provided in the editor to adjust the font color and font attributes, include numbered and bullet lists, and include hyperlinks.