Finding and tracking research interview times is a huge pain. We aim to make that easier with our scheduling feature. Here's how it all works, and keep in mind there are a ton of intricate settings and options to match the intricacy and reality of research scheduling. Also, to answer the most commonly asked question, your time spots don't disappear until a participant is confirmed. This means 50 people can sign up for 3pm on Tuesday, you can choose to invite 10 people, and only after 1 person has clicked the confirm button in their email invite, or you've clicked the "confirm manually" button on calendar, will that 3pm spot disappear for future participants to choose. Now on to the workflow:
Step 1: Add a Scheduling Question
Go to Screeners >> Questions, and add a question that is "Scheduling." You also have to have both an email and a phone question. This is so our automated emails and texts can work.
Step 2: Define Open Interview Spots
Head to "Scheduling" in the top nav and add Open Interview Spots (or OIS for short) that you want to have available for participants to choose for an interview time. Make sure that your correct time-zone is chosen.
Step 2a: Preview that screener
See what kind of experience your participants will have. They are also required to choose their timezone and we calculate the difference - thanks, computers, for being good at that:
Step 3: Customize Emails & Landing Pages
The core of scheduling is letting ethnio send emails to your potential participants. You can customize the sender, the from, and all the text. Mainly you need to be comfortable letting ethnio send an email to each participant that you customize from scheduling >> email on your behalf. Once they are confirmed, they also will get all the details via email.
Step 3a: Landing Pages
After each action in a scheduling email, say when someone clicks the confirm button, there's an associated landing page. You can also customize every word and button on those pages to match your tone, branding, etc
Step 3b: Reminders
Optional step to remind participants about their selected interview. You can turn on one type of reminders, like texts, or disable them all. Super helpful in making sure people actually remember their times.
Step 4: Invite (from Potential Recruits to Invite)
As respondents sign up for date/time slots, you will have the option to schedule them by noticing that an interview spot changes colors and and shows how many potential recruits you have for that time - click on any spot with potential recruits to invite one or more potential recruits. It will only turn green after the participant has clicked "confirm my interview," or you have confirmed them manually. All language is totally customizable and international-friendly.
Step 4A: Invite One or More Participant to the SAME TIME
If you fill out a preview you will see yourself appear as a potential recruit. This is also where you'll see prospective real participants. Click the "Potential Recruits to Invite" box from above, and then the "Invite" button next to any participant you wish to invite to that time (below). Note this will send them an email so they can confirm their interview.
Step 4A: The Invite Email Your Potential Recruits Receive
This is what your participant will then see - first an email and then a congratulations page if their time is still open. In a weird situation where two people click the link close together, the first one gets it, and the next person gets a "Sorry about that - this time is no longer available."
Step 4C: What Happens when I invite multiple people to a single time? (It's pretty smooth)
The first person to confirm a time gets that spot. That means if you invited five people to a 10am interview, the other four will gets a customizable page called "Oops, Time No Longer Available" (which you can of course customize). See below. You can customize this page, but keep in mind they are allowed to pick a new time and will be AUTOMATICALLY CONFIRMED FOR THAT NEW TIME, so it's a pretty good experience for them. Since you invited them to a time already, we assume they should be pre-approved to get a new time. Also note, once someone is invited to a single time, they won't show up to be invited to other times unless you cancel the invite.
Step 5: Confirmed: A Green Box
That's it! Now that time is no longer available for other respondents. It will no longer show up in your screener. Once a box turns green your participant is scheduled for that time slot. Feel free to ask if you have any other questions regarding this, or if you think a particular feature might be beneficial for using this 'scheduling' we have created.
Optional Goodies
- Go to scheduling >> settings and turn on alerts to receive an email when someone cancels, confirms, etc
- Try out the rescheduling process yourself but always make sure to use an incognito window to test rescheduling as if you were a participant
- You can add backup/alternate spots that either are one for the whole day or one backup for a specific spot. Just hit the Backups toggle to turn on that mode and click to add backup spots.
- You can also Subscribe to Outlook/iCal/gCal to automatically have your participants show up on your calendar.
Comments
7 comments
The user sees a button in the email that says "confirm my interview" - what happens with that information? Do I get confirmation that the button was clicked (or not)?
What happens if more than one user chooses the same slot before we are able to schedule them? How do we ask them to reschedule?
Good questions - updating this since we've updated scheduling quite a bit -
Avvo: you do get notified when the user clicks "confirm interview" both via email and on your calendar page the time slot for that participant turns green and their name appears.
Myhealthcasts: while multiple users can select a given time, you can only confirm one participant per time slot. Once someone is confirmed the time is no longer available.
My interview are 4 hours in duration. I want ppp to be able to choose any starting hour between 9am and 4pm. Is it best to set up a 1-hour open slot for every hour of the day so people can choose the nearest hour that suits them? If I specify the slots are 4 hours in duration I can't place more than 2 slots per day. - Any ideas?
Probably the best is to set up a bunch of spots, then add a follow-up question asking them "if none of the above times work for you please specify when would work for you." If you create 1 hour spots there are gonna be all sorts of problems once you start scheduling people. You can always move the 4hr spot and re-send the screener with the suffix #schedule to a participant after you've changed the time... Like https://ethn.io/67686#schedule
Thanks for the tip. You mentioned a "follow-up question", how exactly would you create that in the screener? Ideally it a follow-up question would only appear after the participant had chosen a time slot.
Just a regular next question that says "If there are other times that work better for you then the times listed above, please specify them: [ single text field]"
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