Conditional Questions and Email Notifications
Conditional questions allow you to reduce the number of things you ask in the DMP by skipping questions. For example, if you determine that the research project is not creating or using any sensitive data, then you may not need to ask any detailed ethical questions.
You can set conditions on any question with controlled options e.g. radio buttons, checkboxes or dropdowns.
You can also configure email notification to be sent in response to a single option or combination of options.
The first step in applying conditional questions is to draft your entire template. This may seem counter-intuitive, but in order to add conditions, you need to have the other questions saved in order to specify that you wish to remove them.
If you are unfamiliar with how to edit templates, see the Creating templates section of the manual
You need to save your question and set the options before you can apply conditions on these.
Once you have your questions saved, you will see the option to "Add conditions." Clicking this button allows you to do two things:
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Select a question or series of questions to be removed in response to a single option or combination of options
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Set an email notification to be sent in response to a single option or combination of options
In the image below you will see how conditions can be set.
The first dropdown gives you the choice of a single option in the case of radio buttons, or multiple options if several answers can be selected.
If you set a condition on multiple values, then the user must answer this combination of responses in order to generate the action. For example "Conditions related to data security" AND "Agreements on methodology" being answered by the user to generate the removal of questions selected in the image below. Multiple questions can be ticked to be removed in the same fashion.
If you want to set an email notification, for example to be alerted to large data volumes, enter the email address and define the message as noted below.
When users answer questions with conditions, they will be notified of the action that occurs as below. This will flag that questions have been removed or email notifications sent.
Any removed questions are also removed from the progress bar counter and the DMP download.
If you don't see the conditions, please check you have published your template.
There are a few extensions we plan to make. The primary one of these is setting a delay job for email notifications. We have also been asked to consider adding questions rather than just removing. We are currently consulting with the community to test the extent to which this feature is desired.