Touch Rules: How and When

Careful planning is a good start in helping you to avoid over-surveying participants. To make it even easier, we have built-in a backup for you to help stop survey fatigue. Touch Rules gives you the chance to avoid this common mistake by preventing email invitations from being sent to individuals who:

Received a given number (x) or more invitations within a specific time interval (Hours, Days, Weeks, Months)
Participated in a given number (y) or more surveys within a specific time interval (Hours, Days, Weeks, Months)

For example:You recently sent invitations to everyone on Contact List A. Now, you’d like to send invitations to everyone on Contact List B, but you’re worried that a few addresses might appear on both lists. Use Touch Rules when sending to Contact List B to avoid duplicates.

Applying Touch Rules

Select your survey and click Publish.
In the Email column, select Single-Use Link and proceed by clicking on Continue.
Select the email template you wish to use and proceed.
Next, choose the appropriate source of email addresses.
Under Additional Publishing Options, select the option Touch Rules and click on Continue.
On the Touch Rules step, you will need to specify the criteria to filter out addresses.
1. Apply Touch Rules based on one or more projects:
  - All Projects: The Touch Rule(s) defined here will check all projects in the account.
  - This Project: The Touch Rule(s) defined here will check only this project.
  - Select Projects: The Touch Rule(s) defined here will check only selected projects.
2. Filter those who have received [X] or more invitations within a specific time interval.
  Based on the criteria you provide, this option allows you to prevent invitations from being sent to those who have received a certain number of invitations within the designated time frame.
3. Filter those who have participated in [X] or more surveys within a specific time interval.
  Based on the criteria you provide, this option allows you to prevent invitations from being sent to those who have participated in a certain number of projects they were invited to within the designated time frame.

The participation filter “Filter those who have participated in” will not consider Anonymous and Semi-Anonymous survey records as participation status is not tracked for these project types.

Click on the Refresh results (arrows) icon to see the number of records that will be sent the invitation.
The system checks email addresses in your selected distribution list against records in Master Log to identify those that match the criteria, so all projects in your account are checked in this process.
Click Continue to proceed and send your survey invitations.