Researchers FAQ

Welcome to our Researchers FAQ page! See below for answers to the questions that researchers most frequently ask the Forsta Plus Digital Diaries platform.

What is the Digest?

The Digest is a summary sent to each participant by email. The email is sent at a predetermined time and frequency set by the researcher.

Digest benefits include:

• Save time: The Digest notification is automated, which eliminates the need to export reports and draft a reminder email or message relaying what is needed from the participant.
• Better participation: The notification lists both overdue and currently due activities, upcoming activities that will be posting before the next Digest email, comments and questions left by the moderator, and comments and likes left by other participants on shared activities.
• Participant Specific: Digest will take each participant’s individual progress into account when sending the notification.
• Customized: The Digest notification offers custom wording, allowing the researcher to make it fit their company voice.

See Digest Overview to learn more.

Can I create a test participant?

Yes, a test participant can be created by using a different email address than the one used for the Researcher.  They can be added as a single user in the participants page.  Any activities to be tested will need to be scheduled during a test period.  Once testing is complete, the activities should be unposted, then reposted for the actual study dates.

See Adding a Single Participant to learn more about creating test participants.

How do I get specific types of reports (segmented or participant-specific reports)?

How to Publish Reports:

1. Click Explore>Responses to view your "Responses" tab. Then start filtering by what you want to publish using the drop-down menus near the top.

2. The activity default filter criteria is "Everything". This is located at the top of the list of submitted activities on the left side.

3. The filtering systems works from smallest to largest and does not allow duplicate items of the same category. This means that one can filter by Activity, then Participant, then by Question, etc. However, one cannot filter by two activities at once or two participants at once. Filter options also include custom profile fields.

4. Once the filtering is set to the desired filters, click the caret icon in the top right corner. A drop-menu with the following options will open: Text, CSV, Excel, and Excel with images. All options but the text option will be in an excel file format. The text version automatically includes images.

See The Findings Page to learn more about downloading different report types.

Can I change the project URL/study link?

Yes. The project URL address is generated when you enter the project name. It can be modified before participants are invited to the study but should not be modified after.

See Project Settings to learn more about modifying survey links.

What are the different activity types and what do they mean?

When building an activity, you have the following three options to choose from:

• Influenced: The participant will be able to view other participant's responses before submitting their own response. They will be able to view these responses from their Feed.
• Uninfluenced: The participant will be able to view other participant's responses only after they have submitted one themselves. Once their activity is submitted, they will be able to view other submissions.
• Private: The participant's activity submissions are kept completely private from all other participants. Only the researchers and observers can view the responses.

See Activity Builder to learn more about the different options.

How do I create and assign chains?

Activity chains are used when you want to require participants to complete activities in a specific order.

To create a new Activity Chain:

1. Click New Activity Chain to create a new activity chain in the Activities & Scheduling area.
2. Name your chain. This will not be seen by participants.
3. Check the Random Activity box to make the activities inside of the chain for a given day rotate for each participant to eliminate order bias.
4. Assign the segments to which the chain will be applied.

Once created, you attribute scheduled activities to the chain using the activity editor.

1. Access the editor by selecting the activity once it is placed on the calendar.
2. Inside the editor, attribute the activity to the chain using the Assign this activity to drop down menu.
3. Once you've assigned your activities to the chain, click agenda to see the schedule for your chain. For randomized chain, it allows you to see the order in which each participant will see the activities.

See Creating and Assigning Activity Chains to learn more.

Can I change a non-mobile activity to a mobile activity?

Yes, see Activity Builder to learn more about changing activity versions.

Note:  Mobile activities and the mobile app are only available if you have a mobile license for your project. Contact Forsta Plus Digital Diaries at [e-mail] to learn more.

Can I bulk-download videos?

No, bulk downloads of videos are unavailable. Because videos are much larger than photos, you can not download them in bulk as the resulting file would be too large.

You can download individual videos by either clicking the link at the bottom of a tile when you hover over it, or you can click into the entry and select the link below the video. When you save a video it saves directly to your computer.

See Viewing and Downloading Videos to learn more about downloading videos in bulk.

How do I upload bulk/multiple participants and custom profile fields?

See Creating Custom Profile Fields and Adding Multiple Participants at Once for instructions with images.

1. To add participants to your project, select Participants in the navigation menu.
2. Near the top right of the Participant page, , click the drop-down arrow and select: Upload multiple. This allows you to batch upload participants using a csv wizard.
3. The CSV wizard opens.
4. Download a CSV template pre-populated with all the necessary profile fields by clicking the drop-down arrow at the top right corner of the screen and selecting Download CSV Template.
5. To add custom profiles fields to your project, add new columns into your CSV for each profile field you would like to add.
6. If you'd like to create your own CSV from scratch, the preview page gives you an example of what it should look like.
7. Click Show Tips below the Example.csv for guidance on bulk uploading participants.Be sure to read them!
8. Select Next once you are ready to upload your CSV.
9. The CSV wizard will identify new columns and give you the option to "create a new column" or "ignore."
10. Select Create a new columnto open a drop-down menu that allows you to select the type of data in the column. "Single Select" is data where only one option applies to each participant. "Multiple Select" is data where several options can apply to each participant. "Text" is in case you want to put answers to open-ended questions into a profile field. Select OK to add the new column. Use Multiple Select or Single Select if you want to be able to filter by this column in the Explore area.
    
11. If your CSV has errors in the participant rows, you will be notified about the number and type of errors. Error type and details are displayed so you can see exactly what is wrong.
12. Rows with errors will be highlighted in red. To edit the data simply click into the cell with the error and change it.
13. Select Submit Valid Participants if you'd like to add the participants without errors and skip the ones with errors.
14. Once you have solved any existing errors (or if you didn't have any to begin with) click submit to process your participant csv. Once the csv has loaded correctly the csv will display itself so you can make sure that everything was loaded correctly. Click Done to return to the participants page.

What time do activities go out/post?

When scheduling activities, you will be prompted to select a time for the activity to go live. Activities will go live at the scheduled time in each participant’s individually set timezone. Participants are asked to choose their timezone when registering for the project.

Activities will remain on the Activity To Do list until they are submitted.

See Activities and Scheduling to learn more about launching activities.

Can I use Forsta Plus Digital Diaries on my tablet or smartphone?

Yes, the Forsta Plus Digital Diaries web application is responsive, meaning that it can detect the type of device on which it is being viewed and adapt accordingly. On tablets and smartphones, the interface behaves a little differently due to smaller screen sizes.The biggest difference, is that the left-hand navigation menu is automatically set to "mini-menu" mode by default and must be revealed by pressing the three-bar icon located in the top left-hand corner of the screen. See below images for examples.