Tips & Tricks - User Profile Property Updater

Did you know that Checkbox allows you to automatically update users' custom profile properties with survey answers? For instance, you could collect information such as name and email address in your online survey, then automatically send that information to the user's profile. Not only that, you could then use that stored user data in future surveys or invitation. For instance, you could merge the user's contact information into a subsequent survey and ask if they needed to update their info, or merge their first name into an email invitation to make it more personal. In the example below, we're going to look at the steps needed to collect user contact information for use in future surveys. Set up your Profile Properties -  In order to use the Profile Property Updater, you need to first make sure that all the Profile Properties (aka user profiles or user attributes) that you need are set up. A System Administrator can do this under Settings -> User Settings. For more information on setting up custom Profile Properties, please see: http://www.checkbox.com/how-to-create-custom-profile-properties/

Add Questions to Collect Your Data - Now you'll want to collect the info that will populate your user's Profile Properties. In this example, we created a simple survey with open-ended single line text items to collect the values for First Name, Last Name, and Phone Number.

Add the Profile Property Updater - Once you have your Profile Properties and the questions you want to use to populate those fields, you can add the Profile Property Updater. You can add this action item to any page of your survey as long as it's located on a page after the questions that you're referencing. The automatic updating will then occur as soon as that page is submitted by the respondent. To add the Profile Property Updater:

1. Add a new item to your survey and choose Profile Property Updater under Action Items.
2. Choose the Profile Properties you want to update and the questions you want to use to update those values. Click Save.

Use Your Data - Once our Profile Property Updater is set up, every time a registered Checkbox user takes our survey, the contact info that we collect will automatically be sent to their User Profile and can be used at any time. For instance, when we send a follow-up survey, we can merge those values into our questions and ask the user to confirm or update their info. For more information on merging, please see: http://www.checkbox.com/checkbox-6-text-merge-guide/    

Thanks for reading - now go create your own survey with our Free Trial or review more Checkbox tips and tricks on our Documentation page.