The Web Service allows you to use content from external websites in your survey. Most often, this content will be brought in from another website’s RSS feed. An RSS, or “Really Simple Syndication,” is a web feed of frequently updated content such as news headlines, weather reports, or blog entries. Many websites offer RSS feeds of their content.
For advanced functionality, the Web Services tool can connect your survey with external software programs you have written.
Step-By-Step
Set up a Web Service in your survey
- Open your Survey Flow.
- Select Add Below or Add a New Element Here anywhere in your Survey Flow.
- Select to add a Web Service.
- Click and hold the Move button on the Web Service, and drag it to the top of your Survey Flow.
- Paste the URL of your RSS Feed into the URL field of your Web Service.
- Click Test URL to make sure the URL is correct and see which information you are able to pull from the RSS Feed.
- A box will pop-up. In the box, check any fields you would like to use in your survey, and select Add Embedded Data.
- Take note of the fields that now appear in the Set Embedded Data section of your Web Service. You can change these field names and add or remove fields.
- Save the Survey Flow.
- To display any of these fields in your survey, select the Piped Text icon on the question or choice you’d like the field to appear. Type the name of your field.
Display Today’s Date in Survey
This feature allows you to pipe today’s date into your survey or to pipe any other date that will vary from day to day. Click here to see an Example.
- Insert a Web Service element into the beginning of the Survey Flow.
- Place the following link into the Web Service element:
http://reporting.qualtrics.com/projects/showDate.php
Use ‘timediff’ and ‘var’ to set the parameters to your date as in the example provided. Then label the Embedded Data field and use the Piped Text feature to insert the date into your survey.
More Information
Qtips
- RSS feeds let you access them with no strings attached, but more advanced Web Services may require information from you before they can send you anything back. If this is the case, click Add a parameter to send to the web service in the Web Services element, underneath the Web Service URL, and enter in any necessary field names and values.
- To see which data the participant received from the web service, look for the embedded data fields as separate columns in your data set, or as separate items at the bottom of your reports.
- A popular function that utilizes the Web Service is the Random Number Generator. For more information, visit the Random Number Generator page.