Careers Leaders can send questionnaire links to students in two ways:
- By email from Compass+
- Manually by using mail-merge.
Only schools that have migrated to Groupcall Xporter on Demand, and approved the new Groupcall student email data scopes, are currently able to send questionnaire links by email from within Compass+.
You can manage your student email address data in the Groupcall interface by following these steps:
- Log-in to the Groupcall interface at the following link: IDaaS login
- On the left hand menu, click on Data Sharing
- Select Data sharing Dashboard
- On the Xporter on Demand Apps page, select Careers and Enterprise
- Click on the Sharing Permissions tab
- On the right hand Configure Optional Fields section, click on the blue Configure button
- You will see HomeEmail and WorkEmail with a switch to enable or disable both fields.
All current student emails must be captured in the WorkEmail or HomeEmail field in your MIS if you want to send questionnaires to students from Compass+.
Please ask your IT Manager to whitelist all emails from @careersandenterprise.co.uk. This will prevent FSQ emails to students being blocked by your institution's IT system.
To find out more about how we use this data in Compass +, please click here.
Sending questionnaire links to students by email from Compass+
You can choose to send questionnaire links to students automatically when you generate them (see also How to generate questionnaire links), or send/resend links to students manually.
Compass + sends thousands of FSQ links to students each day, due to the way our systems work, it can take up to 24 hours for the request to register and get sent out from Compass +.
It would be considered best practice to email FSQ links to students at least 24 hours before you want them to complete the questionnaire. This allows time for the emails to send and also for the user to check that they have all been delivered successfully.
When a user sends questionnaire links to students by email, the emails are queued before the system sends them out. Please note that emails will not all arrive at the same time.
Automatically sending questionnaire links to students
To automatically send questionnaire links to students, select your questionnaire type and tick the ‘Send links via email’ checkbox below:
Then select the students you want to send questionnaire links to. When you are ready to proceed, click on the ‘Generate and send links’ button at the bottom of the screen:
Confirmation messages at the top of the screen will confirm that the questionnaire link emails have been sent:
The students’ questionnaire links will be displayed in the student list:
Sending/resending questionnaire links to students manually
You may wish to send or resend questionnaire links to students manually rather than automatically. If you are experiencing issues with emails not sending to students, follow the steps below.
To send a questionnaire link to a student manually, click on the ‘Click to send the questionnaire link to this student’ icon:
Confirmation messages at the top of the screen will confirm the sending of the email to the student (as above).
To resend a questionnaire link to a student manually, click on the ‘Click to resend the questionnaire link to this student’ icon:
If you want to check when a student was sent a questionnaire link email(s), you can do this by clicking on the ‘Click to view send history’ icon:
A pop-up window will show when the student was previously emailed questionnaire links and the email(s) status:
Sending questionnaire links to students using mail-merge
The instructions below explain how to send questionnaire links to students by using Outlook and Word, though other email systems use a similar mail-merge process. The process has two parts:
1. Build your student mailing list
2. Send your student emails using mail-merge.
1. Build your student mailing list
1.1 Download your questionnaire links if you have not already done so. Please see How to download questionnaire links for guidance on how to do this:
1.2 Next, access a list of the same students’ names and email addresses. You may already have access to this data, or you may need to request it from other colleagues (e.g. your MIS administrator) or seek further permissions. This data also needs to be in .CSV or Excel format, as it will be combined with the questionnaire link data (see 1.1):
1.3 You now need to add the students’ email addresses in a new column beside their names in the questionnaire link data spreadsheet. Right-click on the ‘Last name’ column on the questionnaire link data spreadsheet and select ‘Insert columns’. A new column will appear. Name this column ‘Email’ in the first row:
1.4 Now copy the email addresses from the other spreadsheet and paste them into the new column (note: make sure that the correct email address is added beside the correct student):
:
1.5 Save your new spreadsheet with an appropriate file name:
2. Send your student emails using mail-merge
2.1 Create a new blank document in Word. Type-in the email that you want to send to your students containing their questionnaire links. We recommend keeping the email simple - you may want to include a deadline by when you want the students to complete the questionnaire by.
The email body copy needs to contain two unique elements for each student: their first name and their questionnaire link. In the example below, these are shown as tags in brackets:
If you wish, you can use the same email text as in this example by copy-and-pasting the text below:
Dear <FIRST NAME>,
Here is your questionnaire link. Please complete your questionnaire by 20th September 2021:
<QUESTIONNAIRE LINK>
Thanks
Mr Hampson
2.2 Select Mailings > Start mail merge > Step-by-step Mail Merge Wizard:
2.3 Select ‘Email messages’ from the menu to the right of the screen, then click on ‘Next: Starting document’:
2.4 Select ‘Use the current document’, then click on ‘Next: Select recipients’:
2.5 Select ‘Use an existing list’ and click on 'browse' to the right of the screen. Select the spreadsheet you saved in step 1.5 (above). Open the file and you will see a modal window. Click on ‘Open’:
2.6 A modal window will pop-up. Click on 'OK':
2.7 You can now check and edit your list of students again if necessary. Once you are happy with your list, click ‘OK’:
2.8 Click on ‘Next: Write you letter’:
2.9 Click on ‘More items’ to add your merge fields into your email (the merge fields ensure that each student email contains the correct first name and questionnaire link):
2.10 Select ‘First name’, then click on ‘Insert’. Then select ‘Questionnaire link’, then click on ‘Insert’. This will insert your two merge codes:
2.11 You then need to remove your place-holder tags and replace them with the merge tags. Make sure that the merge tags are in the correct places. After you have done this, your email should look as follows (Note: each merge tag is contained within double chevrons):
2.12 Click on ‘Next: preview your letters’:
2.13 You can now preview all of the emails that will be sent to your students by using the tool to the right of the screen (note: at this point, you may want to ask another colleague to check that you have set-up the mail-merge correctly and the data you are about to send out to students is correct/permitted):
2.14 When you are happy with your emails, click on ‘Next: Complete the merge’:
2.15 Select Finish & Merge > Send Email Messages:
2.16 A modal window will pop-up. Add the copy that you want to appear in the email Subject field when it is received by your students. Select ‘Plain text’ as the email format.
Finally, click on ‘OK’ to send your emails to your students:
Note: Some users may find that their sent emails get stuck in their Outlook outbox. If this happens, open Outlook and click on ‘Send/Receive All Folders’ to clear the outbox.
2.17 You can check which students have completed their questionnaires by viewing the 'Status' column beside the student questionnaire links in Compass+:
Questionnaire Status definitions.
| Not submitted | No action has been taken |
| Request received | A user has requested to send an email to the student with their questionnaire link, but it has not yet been queued in our mailing system |
| Email queued | An email has been requested to send, and is queued in our mailing system |
| Email sent | Our mailing system is confirming that the email has been sent |
| Email delivered | Our system has confirmed that the email has been opened or clickedWe've waited 24 hours since the link has been sent and we have not received an error |
| Error sending | There is an error sending the email |
| View responses | The learner has completed the questionnaire |
- If we have no FSQ related status for the learner, it will always say ‘not submitted’
- If the learner has completed the questionnaire, it will always say ‘view responses’ regardless of the email status
- The ‘request received’ status won't be shown for long as the system goes from ‘request received’ to ‘email queued’ quite quickly.