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. There's a distinction between invited vs confirmed that is somewhat unique to Ethnio, so here's a callout:
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: Add Open Interview Spots
Head to "Scheduling" in the top nav and click anywhere on the calendar to add Open Interview Spots (or OIS for short) that you want to have available for participants to choose for an interview time. Or click the green circle + to add a bunch of spots. Make sure that your correct time-zone is chosen.
Step 3: Preview and submit
Head to the top of your screen and click screener name >> preview. See what kind of experience your participants will have and fill out the screener 1-2 times with your email or a fake email. Note that responses without emails won't work with scheduling. This is also important to understand the workflow and helps us with the steps below. Respondents are also required to choose their timezone and we calculate the difference.
Then you can preview as a link, which is most common, or as an intercept:
Step 4: Customize Emails, Landing Pages, & Reminders
The core of scheduling is Ethnio sending emails and invites to your potential participants. You can customize the sender, from, and all the text. Edit the content from Scheduling >> Emails paying close attention to the Details Email including Location. Most often, this contains a Zoom link or address.
You can use your own Zoom account to integrate with Ethnio and have Ethnio automatically create unique Zoom meetings or Webinars. Read more here on the Zoom Integration. Or enter any static information such as a NDA link or steps they should complete prior to the interview. You can include images but no attachments.
Landing Pages
After each action in a scheduling email, say when someone clicks the confirm button, there's an associated landing page. You can customize every word and button on those pages but most customers use the default language.
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 5: Invite Potential Recruits
As respondents sign up for date/time slots, you will notice the interview spot changes colors and and shows how many potential recruits you have for that time. Click on any teal box marked Potential Recruits to Invite.
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. Now click the green "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.
Confirm from Email or Manually
This is what your participant will then see - first an email:
Then you can either click Confirm My Interview or if you're on the scheduling >> calendar page, open up any invited participant and click Manually Confirm. This is especially helpful if you had direct communication with the participant and know they are good for a given time, so don't need them to click the link in their email.
Confirmed Page
Either way, they now will receive the details email and if they click the confirm link, then they will see this page if their time is still open.
If you invited multiple people to the same time, the first person to confirm gets the spot. Read on for what happens to the other invited participants for that time.
If you invited five people to a 2pm interview, and the first respondent confirmed, the other four will get a customizable page called "Oops, Time No Longer Available" (which you can of course customize).
You're done! Confirmed participants show as green boxes
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 Settings
To go a bit further with customize , here are some optional
- Email Alerts for Collaborators
Go to scheduling >> settings and turn on alerts to receive an email when someone cancels, confirms, etc. You can put emails for collaborators on your team who can automatically be notified when there's a scheduling participant as well.
- High Touch Rescheduling
Set a window, use two types of rescheduling (open and closed) and much more. Pro tip: always make sure to use an incognito window to test rescheduling as if you were a participant - Backups / Alternates
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. - Five Ways to Share Scheduling Participants
You can Subscribe to Outlook/iCal/gCal to automatically have your participants show up on your calendar or your team mates, or send them a dynamic participant list with PII toggles. And a few more.
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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