Setting Participant-Selected Timing for Text Message Conversations and Other Events
When setting repeating message events, many teams use a standard time schedule - for instance, this message goes out daily at 10:00AM. But a single set time will rarely work for everyone enrolled in a program. There are bound to be people who wish they could choose their own time, when they’re best able to respond to text prompts. Fortunately, Way to Health has a feature that allows them to do just that.
Instructions
To create a mechanism by which participants can choose their own custom messaging time, you will need to do the following:
Create a survey question to be administered during enrollment that asks participants to select a time. This can be a question added to an existing enrollment survey, or a separate, single-question survey. The question type should be “Text Box,” with the input set to “Time”:
If you want participants to have the option to change their event timing once their program has started, then you should proceed with creating a single-question survey. This way, the same survey can be included in the event schedule to update timing. See the bottom of this page for details.
This will collect the time that we will use later in the event schedule. The question will look like this to the participant:
Responses can either be typed in, or selected from a time picker by clicking the clock icon on the right
If the survey you added the question to is already part of your enrollment flow, scroll down to the next blue panel
If the survey containing the question is not already part of the enrollment schedule, navigate to Manage Study > Enrollment and select Survey from the drop-down under the +Add Enrollment Step button.
Give your enrollment step a name, and select the survey from the Source drop-down:
Once the question has been added to an enrollment step, continue below.
Now navigate to Manage Study > Study Arms and select Manage Event Schedule for the arm you want to build the scheduled messaging into.
Click the +Add Event button and select your event type. Fun fact: this feature can be used to schedule ANY type of event! But it’s most useful for messaging.
Configure the event to use the participant’s selected time as shown below:
The first drop-down asks you to select the survey, and will only show surveys used in the enrollment schedule. The second drop-down asks you to indicate which question on the survey will have the desired time value. As you can see, you can also indicate a default time for the event to occur, in case the participant does not complete the enrollment question.
Save your event, and voila! You now have events scheduled based on participant-selected time.
Finally, to enable participants to modify their message timing after they have started, include an event administering the same survey in the “Participant Start” event block. An example of how to configure this event is pictured below: