Pre-population format

Pre-population makes it possible to fill out responses to questions before the respondent views the survey form. It is possible to use pre-population by adding parameters to the survey URL or by adding attribute to invitee data. Both URLs and invitee data use the same format.

All pre-populated responses are based on parameters name and parameter value pairs. The parameter name identifies which question to pre-populate and the value specifies the response. The format of the value defines how to populate a multi-value response (for example a multiple choice or a matrix question).

Parameter name and value format:

All text values for all input types might contain the value separator “-”. To prevent Opinio interpreting this as a value separator, it can be escaped by a single quote preceding it.

The format described above is for pre-population using URL parameters. Some characters are not valid in a URL, because they are reserved as special URL characters. Examples are /,?,&,#. In order to get around this problem all URL parameters must be URL-encoded. See Wikipedia for more information.

Pre-population can also be done using invitations and custom data. Example of a CSV file for importing invitees:

        email, pre_q1, pre_q2, pre_q2_ftxt
        myemail@mail.com, 2, 1, mytext 
        youremail@mail.com, 4, 3, yourtext 
        heremail@mail.com, 8, 6, hertext 
                        

As you can see the parameter names are specified in the first line and the values are from the second line. The format of each value is the same as for URL parameters.

Using this format, it is possible to pre-populate the survey form with individual values per respondent. See the section called “Invitee data format” for more information on the invitee format.