Allow the platform to automatically assign participants to the correct surveys with the use of trigger events.
Automatic triggers can be set up to match your HRIS data so you can spend more time acting on your feedback and less time managing surveys. A new employee can automatically get assigned their onboarding survey, an employee who moves departments can get triggered to give feedback on their new department, an employee leaving the company can automatically be assigned to their exit survey … and … well the scenarios are endless.
Trigger events will assign (if criteria is met) and unassign (if criteria is not met) participants from always on and pulse surveys. Participants unassigned via trigger event will not be removed from the surveys invited number in reporting. Trigger events will only assign participants to point in time surveys, they will not unassign.
Set up Your Trigger Events
In the assign participants section of your survey settings, select automatic triggers. Trigger event criteria can be set up using any demographic you have included in your census file and populating in the participants table. Depending on the type of demographic selected (string, date, number), the trigger options will adjust accordingly.
Date Demographics
You can set up your survey to automatically assign and unassign employees based on date demographic criteria. To create a trigger events based on date demographics:
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Select Field: select the corresponding date demographic from the first dropdown menu (Term Date, Hire Date)
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Conditions (second dropdown menu):
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less than or equal to – assign to participants who meet the value or dates before the value.
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greater than or equal to – assign to participants who meet the value or dates after the value.
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between – assign to participants within the value range.
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Values: Enter date or number values for the date demographics. A negative number represents the number of days after your selected demographic date. A positive number represents the number of days before your selected demographic date.
Onboarding/New Hire Survey Examples
Trigger a survey to assign new employees once they reach a specific anniversary date. For example, you may want to assign new hires to a survey 45 days after they are hired, and after their 90-day anniversary, you want the employee to no longer have access to the survey. In this example, the trigger would be set up as shown below.
You will notice there is a second criteria set up to exclude anyone that has an employee status of "Term". Adding this additional field will make sure that only active employees are getting asked to complete your new hire/onboarding surveys. In the below example if someone exits the company prior to their 45-day anniversary, they will not be invited to complete the survey. If they have already been invited to the survey and leave the company prior to their 90-day anniversary, they will be removed from the survey.
Numbers entered must reflect number of days. In this example, you would enter -45 to reflect 45 days after an employee’s hire date (when the hire date is 45 days in the past).
In the following example, in order to be assigned to the survey, the employee must have a hire date somewhere between 60 and 120 days ago AND not have any of the four term reasons listed (Personal, Retired, Temp position, Unsat. Performance).
Exit Survey Examples
Depending on how your HRIS tracks termination (i.e. term) dates, you will most likely want to account for a range of past dates and future dates to accommodate people who have already exited and their termination date is in the past, and pending exits (individuals who give advanced notice and you want to give feedback prior to their termination date).
In the following example, your exit survey would be assigned to anyone with a term date within the past 90 days as well as anyone with a term date 14 days in the future. After 91 days from that term date, they would be unassigned from the survey.
Are you also looking to only send this exit survey to voluntary exits? To do this, add an additional trigger event criteria by clicking "add rule". Set up the second criteria to include a termination reason demographic and specify to only include voluntary terminations in this survey.
String Demographics
You can set up your survey to automatically assign and unassign employees based on string demographic (job title, department, location) criteria. To create a trigger events based on string demographics:
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Select Field: select the corresponding string demographic from the first dropdown menu
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Conditions (second dropdown menu):
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includes - assigns to participants connected to the selected demographic items.
- does not include - assigns to participants that are not connected to the selected demographic items.
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Values: Select options from the third dropdown menu of the selected demographic. You must have employees and their demographics imported into the PEOPLE Tab for items to show in the dropdown menu. If an item is not populating, type the item into the box and click on the item in blue to add to the list.
The following example would trigger a survey to be assigned to participants in the sales department only. If an employee moves from sales to a different department later, they will be automatically unassigned from this survey.
Number Demographics
You can set up your survey to automatically assign and unassign employees based on number demographic (performance rating, job codes) criteria. To create a trigger events based on number demographics:
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Select Field: select the corresponding number demographic from the first dropdown menu
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Conditions (second dropdown menu):
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includes - assigns to participants connected to the selected demographic items.
- does not include - assigns to participants that are not connected to the selected demographic items.
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less than or equal to – assign to participants who meet or are above the value.
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greater than or equal to – assign to participants who meet or are below the value.
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between – assign to participants within the value range.
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Values: Select options from the third dropdown menu of the selected demographic. You must have employees and their demographics imported into the PEOPLE Tab for items to show in the dropdown menu. If an item is not populating, type the item into the box and click on the item in blue to add to the list.
Trigger Events for Point in Time Surveys
If you are running a point in time survey, trigger events will only assign employees to the survey, it does not unassign like it does for a pulse or always on survey. If you need to unassign employees from a point in time survey, this can be done either manually by editing the participant record or using the unassign survey export/import in the manage participants page of the PEOPLE tab.
Best practice is to manually assign participants to point in time surveys.
Complex Trigger Events
Depending on the needs for your survey, you can create simple or complex triggers. In addition to including multiple criteria with the "and" or "or" rules, you can also add multiple criteria groups using the "add group" feature. In the following example, there are two groups of rules being separated by "or". Employees would be assigned to the survey if their location is in Denver and they work in the Sales department OR if their location is not Denver and they are in the professional job class.
Both criteria within a group need to be met for a participant to be assigned, but the participant does not need to meet the criteria of both groups.
