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Web Forms & Surveys

Last Updated November 2024

Qualtrics is the preferred tool for campus surveys because it meets information security and accessibility requirements not found in other online survey and form tools. For this reason, the College of Fine Arts web team uses it for all forms, with the exception of some email signup forms, embedded on our websites.

IMPORTANT – before you ever make an edit to an existing form, make sure it is in the Published state on Qualtrics. The “Publish” button should be a light blue. If something was changed and not published you need to figure out what it is. Therefore, it is also important that you ALWAYS leave your work Published when your done.

On this page:

  • Forms Embedded on Websites
  • Accessibility
  • Layout & Theme
  • Email Triggers
  • Learn More

Forms Embedded on Websites

Web forms embedded on our websites require additional configurations. Therefore, if you want a form embedded into a page on one of our websites, please ask the College of Fine Arts Web team to create it for you.

The College web team will be the primary owner of all forms embedded on our websites. This is helpful to mitigate issues with staff changes. The web team can make you a collaborator if you want to make minor edits or review submissions data and analysis within Qualtrics. Otherwise, we will create an email trigger to send the submissions to you directly.

Following are some tips for creating stand alone forms. These tips apply for embedded and non-embedded forms.

Accessibility

Follow these instructions to run an accessibility check of your form and correct any issues. Issues for the “affected questions” will be displayed in the section titled, Accessibility: WCAG . Consult the Qualtrics guide to survey accessibility for more details about Qualtrics accessibility features.

Layout & Theme

You must use the Simple Layout.

Layout is different from Theme in Qualtrics. For embedded forms we use the blank theme. For a form that will stand alone, use the utexas2 theme for UT branding.

Converting An Already Existing Form

If you are converting an existing form to the Simple Layout you may see a pop-up notifying you that some questions are not yet available in the Simple layout. Find a list of  useable question types here  and a list of unsupported features here.

Common Issues When Converting Forms

File Upload Question Type

This question type is available in the Simple Layout but you must remove it before converting a form and then add it back once you’ve converted your form. Find instructions for adding the File Upload question type in Simple Layout here.

Also, you must be pre-approved to use the File Upload question type, if you receive notification that you lack permission, contact its-survey@utlists.utexas.edu.

JavaScript

Simple Layout doesn’t currently support additional JavaScript and this must be removed before you will be allowed to covert the form to Simple Layout.

External Style Sheets

Simple Layout does not currently support external style sheets and any links to them must be removed before converting. Note, there is a strange bug which doesn’t allow you to erase the last character of the external style sheet link. If this should happen you will need to restore defaults before you will be allowed to erase the last character. To do this, navigate to Look Feel > Styles > Restore Defaults.

Styles

Be aware that when you convert a form to Simple Layout you will lose your previous style settings. So, please note these settings before converting.

Email Triggers

Email triggers allow you to send an automated notification when a form has been submitted to the interested parties. The email notification contains survey results and links to uploaded files.

Email triggers can also be used to send a confirmation/follow-up email to the person who submitted the form but, to do so, your form needs to have a question requesting the submitter’s email contact information.

For complete instructions on setting up email triggers visit the Qualtrics help site here.

Email Trigger Tip

Confirmation/follow-up emails use piped text codes to pull in the email information from the form into the email trigger. Information about how this is done can be found in the email trigger help page here.

The piped text you want to use will look like this: ${q://QID1/ChoiceTextEntryValue}. Do not use the piped information found under Question Text.

Learn More

The university overview of Qualtrics: Qualtrics Survey Tool

The Qualtrics website contains excellent help pages including screenshots and “Get started” videos.

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The COFA Web team can be reached by emailing us at cofawebmaster@austin.utexas.edu


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