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One of the primary uses of CommCare Messaging is to send out surveys via SMS.
Some common use cases:
Asking a patient if they have taken their medication
Asking a community health worker some questions about their most recent visit
Surveys are very easy to build because they use the same Form Builder as CommCare.
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Getting Started
Navigate to the tab that is called "Applications."
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You can find basic information about the Form Builder here or in the Beginner Tutorial. It is highly recommended that you complete the Beginner Tutorial before proceeding.
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Design your Survey
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Warning! Please do not make the first question in your SMS survey a question list. This may lead to errors in the sending of the SMS survey. Please note that the following are not supported in SMS surveys:
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Referencing the Form Builder Page, you can think through the different types of questions you may want to include in your survey, and how you want the structure of your survey.
The most common question types for SMS Surveys are:
Text
Multiple Choice - Single Answer
Multiple Choice - Multiple Answer (Checkbox)
Label - is a message that does not require any action- it is only to provide information
Be sure to consult the CommCare Messaging best practices for helpful hints on designing a good survey.
Let's imagine we want to create a survey like this:
Did you go to the clinic today? Yes/No
Great! What doctor did you see?
Why not? Clinic was closed/I felt fine/Clinic too far/Was busy
Going to the clinic is important- please call 555-555 to reschedule your appointment.
We can add a bit more detail to make it easier to build. For each question you'll want to define:
Question ID- how do you want the answer to the question to be tagged in the data export
Label Text- the text that will be sent to the recipient
Question Type- which of the question types above
Options- if a multiple choice answer, what are the choices
Display Condition- when do you want the message to be sent?
Below you can see one way of thinking about our survey:
Question ID | Label Text | Question Type | Options | Display Condition |
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went_to_clinic | Did you go to the clinic today? | Multiple Choice-Single Answer | Yes, No | Always show |
next_appointment | Great! What doctor did you see? | Text | - | If went_to_clinic = Yes |
why_no_clinic | Why not? |
Checkbox | Clinic was closed, I felt fine, |
Clinic too far, Was busy | If went_to_clinic = No |
reschedule | Going to the clinic is important |
. Please call 555- |
5555 to reschedule your appointment. | Label | - | If went_to_clinic = No |
CommCare Messaging will automatically number options; for example, the question why_no_clinic will be sent out as:
Why not? 1. Clinic was closed, 2. I felt fine, 3. Clinic too far, 4. Was busy.
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Build your survey
Use the Form Builder to add questions, options, and display conditions just as indicated in the Beginner Tutorial.
The survey described above would look like this:
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It is important to keep things short! Specifically, when asking a multiple choice question you want to ensure that the text of the question, plus the text of all the possible answers fits in one message. If it is too long, it may be broken into multiple messages. Messages are not always assembled in the right order so it advisable not to have them break up.
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There are certain words that cannot be used to test surveys. ex. SURVEY, START.
Test your survey
Make sure to try out your survey before going live. You can give it a keyword (Setup SMS Keywordshttps://dimagi.atlassian.net/wiki/x/KCXKfw ) and register yourself in the system (Configure a Mobile Worker for Messaging). https://dimagi.atlassian.net/wiki/x/-yjKfw).
Using the keyword you can try out the survey multiple times. To test the survey using the keyboard, text the system using the format: #start keyword
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When completing your survey keep in mind:
You can indicate a choice by replying with either the text of that choice or by simply putting the number of that choice (i.e. you can either reply with 2 or I felt fine. CommCare Messaging will ignore changes in spacing/capitalization, but not in spelling)
If your question is
Multiple Choice- Multiple Answera Checkbox response you can reply with multiple numbers separated by a space. (i.e. in the example above you could indicate both Clinic too far and Was busy by replying: 3, 4)
If you reply with something that is not an acceptable reponse (i.e. there are 4 choices and you reply with "5") CommCare Messaging will send back a generic message that the response could not be understood, and that they should try again.
5. Schedule your survey
Follow the directions at Schedule a Reminder (Set-up Reminders) in order to schedule your survey. When you get to the "send" section you'll need to choose "SMS Survey" and then choose your desired form from the drop-down:
6. View your Data
Data from SMS Surveys can be seen under standard Form Submissions in the CommCare Reports. You can view these Form Submissions anywhere, but be sure to select "unknown users" if you are looking for data from SMS surveys that were sent to cases..
Schedule your survey & View Data
You can schedule your survey either using a Broadcast or Conditional Alert.
Data from SMS Surveys are set-up in Forms. To review your SMS survey data, apart from other SMS data, you can go to the Form Exports in CommCare.
If you are looking for data from SMS users who are cases, be sure to select "unknown users" to export that information.
SMS Survey FAQs
What question types can I use to send out questions via SMS survey?
Good
Integer, respond with a number
Single-select, respond with a specific choice
Date based, set the date sequence for your project space
Not so good
Text questions are prone to error data entry errors, and hard to interpret
Not supported
Images, multimedia
GPS
What are limitations for using SMS Surveys?
SMS Surveys require inbound messages. Support for inbound messages is limited to projects with a subscription that is PRO or higher.
SMS Surveys are not idea for collecting unstructured incoming messages
A contact cannot have more than one open survey at a time.
A contact cannot restart or overwrite submitted SMS surveys
How flexible is two way messaging?
Two way messaging with mobile workers requires a verification workflow to enable inbound messages, where each phone replies ‘123’ to establish the phone number in HQ.
How do you test that the SMS survey is setup correctly?
Try creating a Keyword, that can trigger the form used for the SMS survey.
How do I test the send time of an SMS Survey?
Timezones in HQ are set to UTC as a standard. Use the reminder calendar, to compare the time configured in the reminder to the planned delivery in the calendar.
SMS Survey Tutorial
Below is an SMS Survey Tutorial that walks you through the steps of setting up an SMS Survey!
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This tutorial will describe how to setup an SMS survey for your project. This builds on the application already developed in the Messaging Beginner Tutorial, so please complete that tutorial before continuing. We will add an SMS survey to that application that will check with the mother if she has visited the clinic.
Creating an SMS SurveyAn SMS Survey is just another form in CommCareHQ. You can have the same logic you have in forms (display logic, validation logic). You can also use the survey to update cases as you can with regular CommCareHQ forms. The only limitation on SMS surveys is that only some question types will work over SMS (text, label, numbers and single and multiple choice). Setup the SMS Application We need to add a new application to the existing project created for the Messaging Beginner Tutorial. This application will contain all the SMS surveys so they don't appear in the existing health worker application.
 Add the Clinic Attendance Survey This tutorial assumes you already know how to create a form with hidden values.
 The following calculations and display logic is used in the form:
 Now that our survey is setup, we can setup a reminder to send it to pregnant mothers. Setup an SMS Survey ReminderWe'll now setup a reminder so that the survey will only be sent to mothers who have been flagged by the CHW as needing to visit the clinic. This messages will also be setup to repeat on a weekly basis until either the CHW or mother indicates she has visited the clinic. We'll schedule the message to send on Tuesdays in the evening (so that the mother can respond after visiting the clinic).
 We can now view the scheduled reminder in the calendar and test out how it works. Test and Verify the SurveyNow that our reminder is setup, we can test it using our phones and view it in the reminder calendar. Setup a Sample Case Similar to how was done in the Messaging Beginner Tutorial, use the existing registered pregnancy or create a new pregnancy case and flag that case for high risk symptoms. Please make sure the phone number you enter is unique - that is, it is not used by any other case or mobile worker in the system.
View Surveys in the Reminder Calendar Once you've registered a case, the reminder should appear in the Reminder Calendar (available in the Messaging tab).  Testing a Survey Using a Broadcast Since reminders are scheduled in the future, its sometimes hard to test how they behave immediately after creating them. To test a survey immediately after we create it, we can use a Broadcast, that will send that survey to a mobile worker. The survey won't behave exactly as it should (it won't be associated with a case), but will still be testable.
 Your test mobile worker should now receive the survey shortly. To respond to multiple choice questions, you can respond with a number (ex. 1) representing the answer in the list. Note: This survey won't affect any existing cases and is just a way to test the questions. If your survey is not sent out, check the Reminder Calendar. If it doesn't appear on the reminder calendar, check the Reminder in Error report to see if there was an issue with the survey. Viewing Surveys in Reports By default, surveys filled in by cases will not display in the Submit History report. In the Groups and Users filter, click and make sure you also include [Unknown Users].  Congratulations, you've completed the SMS Survey tutorial! Use the https://dimagi.atlassian.net/wiki/x/XCrKfw page to read more about messaging and other functionality. |