How do I use Custom Come Back Later Codes for an Anonymous Survey?

With Web Survey Creator it's possible to generate come-back-later codes for your anonymous survey, however there may be times where you want to use specific codes that have not been generated by the Web Survey Creator platform.

You can use the following steps to use custom recall codes by importing unstarted anonymous survey responses:

1. From the Survey Designer click on Distribution --> Methods and select Edit Distribution Settings by using the icon
2. While in this browse, scroll down until you find the "When Respondents return to the Survey what should they be allowed to do?" heading
3. Here you will want to choose the option “Respondents can leave the survey and return later to complete an uncompleted response” – this will allow survey respondents to return to the survey
4. You will also need to choose the option “Do not allow new "Come-back-Later" Codes to be requested. That is, only existing "Come-back-Later" Codes may be used.” Enabling this option will restrict respondents from generating new come-back-later codes for the survey. We only want to codes that we have made to be used.
   

Now that we have these distribution settings correctly setup, we will need to import responses into the survey and set the custom recall code values.

Return to the Distribution --> Methods browse and click on the “Import/Generate Responses” dropdown, here you will find the option "Import Responses". Note this option will be greyed out/unavailable if you're not using an anonymous distribution.

After clicking on the Import Responses option you will be able to import Unstarted responses into the anonymous survey.

When importing the unstarted responses, you can use the recallcode column in your upload file to set your custom come-back-later codes for the responses. After importing the unstarted responses, the custom come-back-later code will need to be entered to start a survey response.

It is important to note that some specific characters/symbols cannot be used for custom come-back-later codes. It is also not recommended to use recall codes that can easily be guessed, which would allow unwanted access to the survey.