Remove or truncate unnecessary parameters in unique survey URLS? | XM Community
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Remove or truncate unnecessary parameters in unique survey URLS?

  • 4 February 2021
  • 14 replies
  • 176 views
J

so I'm looking at adding query strings to unique survey URLs, and some of our invites go out via SMS, so character limits are a thing.
I have an employee engagement survey set up, and the unique links that are generated include all of these fields:
Q_TS_RE_PID Three sixty Evaluator ID
Q_TS_ID Three sixty ID
Q_TS_PID Three sixty Person ID
Q_TS_RS Three sixty Relationship
This isn't a 360, so the PID & RE_PID are identical, and the relationship = "Self"
The reason I ask is I'm trying to use an URL shortener, and it works if I just shorten the survey URL prior to the last "/", and then I can append the rest of the full URL (so I don't have to generate a unique URL for each link). However that isn't very efficient, because it only saves me 21 characters, as I have all this other stuff that appears after that in the URL.
It seems like I only need one of those 4 fields specified in the URL, but it doesn't work if I remove any of them.
TIA.



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Best answer by JYurkovich 5 February 2021, 17:20

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14 replies

A
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Have you tried using QEED. It works for personal links generated via the directory, I do not know about employee engagement.

J


J

https://www.qualtrics.com/community/discussion/comment/34161#Comment_34161thanks, I haven't yet. it is an interesting idea though. Not sure what that gets me, as it appears to create an even longer string of text than you start with...

A
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You could add your common parameters to QEED, shorten it and then append the unique ones. Does that not work?

J

https://www.qualtrics.com/community/discussion/comment/34165#Comment_34165unfortunately no.
here's how things break down:
https://mysurveydomain.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_012345678901234/Q_TS_ID=XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX&Q_TS_PID=XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX&Q_TS_RE_PID=XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX&Q_TS_RS=Self&_=1
I can only shorten everything up through the SV, as I need to have the shortened URL followed by the slash in order for it to let me append the other info. the other 4 fields I mentioned occur after the slash, so they can't be shortened.

A
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Usually query parameters start with 

?
so you should have had 
1234?Q_TS_ID
instead of 
1234/Q_TS_ID
. See if that work. 
If it does, then these are regular query parameters and you can rearrange them however you want, which would allow you to get a url of the form 
...1234?Q_TS_PID=xxx&Q_TS_RE_PID=xxx&Q_TS_RS=Self&=1&Q_TS_ID=xxx
and you could shorten everything till 1, then append the required values.

J

https://www.qualtrics.com/community/discussion/comment/34172#Comment_34172Sorry, I should have had "/?Q_TS_ID...", which is what the URL is.
the problem is some shortened URLs don't like having things appended to them. bitly won't work at all, tinyurl works, but only if whatever is appended starts with a slash. I tried starting the appended portion with a ? and an &, and neither worked.

A
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https://rebrandly.com

J

https://www.qualtrics.com/community/discussion/comment/34179#Comment_34179Doesn't work any different than tinyurl

A
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It does. Are you using it correctly?
This link https://rb.gy/6cftxm redirects to a survey where the 

TS_ID
is empty.
This link https://rb.gy/6cftxm/?TS_ID=value_present redirects to same survey where 
TS_ID
is 
value_present

bstrahin
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I don't have access to the 360 but if it works like XMCore couldn't you define some of these in the beginning of the survey flow using an embedded data instead of putting them in the URL.
For instance, you could have a URL with just Q_TS_PID defined
URL?Q_TS_PID=XXXXXX
Then in your flow, you first set of Embedded Data be
Q_TS_PDI - set from panel or URL
Q_TS_ID - seems like this is static and could be hard coded?
Q_TS_RS - hard code "Self"
Then the next element is Embedded Data again where you put
Q_TS_RE_PID - pipe value of embedded data Q_TS_PID

J

https://www.qualtrics.com/community/discussion/comment/34191#Comment_34191I like where you're going with this, unfortunately when you go to set embedded data in Flow, you aren't able to define the values. "Reserved Embedded Data fields cannot have custom values".

bstrahin
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JYurkovich thanks for sharing. Sorry to hear this.

J

https://www.qualtrics.com/community/discussion/comment/34185#Comment_34185So it appears I was not using it correctly. when I tried it, I had attempted to append the fields to the shortened URL using an &, just like they were in the full URL.
I noticed you were using the /?, and that worked.
I tried it with QEED for the other fields first, and then not encoded, and it worked both ways.
So, for others that are looking for a clear step by step:
1. Starting with this survey link:
https://mysurveydomain.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_012345678901234/?Q_TS_ID=XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX&Q_TS_PID=XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX&Q_TS_RE_PID=XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX&Q_TS_RS=Self
2a. Remove the two PID fields so it looks like this:
https://mysurveydomain.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_012345678901234/?Q_TS_ID=XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX&Q_TS_RS=Self
If you are Embedding data via the query string, and it's static for this part of the link, you can append those values here
3a. Shorten that URL with your favorite service so it looks like this:
https://rb.gy/XXXX
2b. OR, if you need something less translatable in the full URL, translate everything after the ? to base 64 like is described in the link above, and append it so it looks like this, then shorten that version of the URL:
https://mysurveydomain.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_012345678901234/?Q_EED=eyJRX1RTX0lEIjoiWFhYWFhYWFhYWFgiLCJRX1RTX1JTIjoiU2VsZiJ9
4. Then append the values for the two remaining fields and anything else you're passing in the query string to the shortened URL, preceded by "/?" like this:
https://rb.gy/XXXX/?Q_TS_PID=XXXXXXXXXX&Q_TS_RE_PID=XXXXXXXXX
In my particular application, I was able to reduce the length of the link URL from 167 to 79, which is a huge improvement.

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