Text Piping in Task Instructions

Text Piping is a feature that allows you to dynamically insert a participant's previous response into the instructions of a subsequent task. You can leverage this tool to surface selections from a Poll (including Fill-The-Blanks Polls), Grid, or Sort-And-Rank task to gain greater insight into why participants made certain choices. This enhances recall, engagement, and overall response quality by providing participants with a more cohesive and contextual experience.

In this article, we’ll cover:

• How to Insert Responses From a Previous Task Into Task Instructions
• Previewing
• Important Considerations
• Frequently Asked Questions

How to Insert Responses From a Previous Task Into Task Instructions

Responses from a Poll, Fill-The-Blanks Poll, Grid, or Sort-And-Rank task can be piped into the Question or Instructions of any other task type. To do so, follow these steps:

1. First, navigate to the task where you want to display the piped text and open its Question or Instructions field for editing.
2. Place your cursor where you would like the piped response to appear and click the Insert Response button in the text editor toolbar.
3. A modal window will appear. Here, you must specify the source of the response:
   1. Activity: Select the Activity containing the source task.
   2. Task: Choose the specific Poll, Grid, or Sort-And-Rank response.
   3. Response Type: Define which response to show (e.g., Selected Choices, Unselected Choices, etc.).
4. Click the Insert Response button to confirm your selections. 
5. Once confirmed, a placeholder chip (i.e., [Selected Choices]) will be added to your Instructions field. 
   
6. Complete the remaining Task Setup as needed.
7. Click Save.

When participants view the task, this chip will then be dynamically replaced with their own unique response from the previous source task.

Previewing

• Text Piping can be previewed at both the Activity and Study level.
• Admins must complete the related task in preview for the piped response to display.
• If you’re only previewing the individual follow-up task, no data will be piped and only the placeholder text will be visible.

Important Considerations

When editing related tasks that are used for piping, changing a task that other tasks depend on may change the responses piped into dependent tasks. Deleting a related task will cause follow-up tasks with piping to not show up at all.

To help manage this, any task that affects the visibility of future tasks will include a Dependencies section in its setup. This section links to all tasks that rely on it for visibility conditions.

Frequently Asked Questions

• Can I edit a task that uses Text Piping after participants have responded?
  • Yes. You can edit the Task Instructions at any time, even after responses have been collected. Any changes you make, such as adding or removing a piped response, will not affect previously submitted responses but will apply to participants who have not yet completed the task
• Can I edit the choices of a source task that is being piped into a follow-up task?
  
  • Yes, you can edit the response options of a source task (e.g., a Poll) even while it is being piped into another task. The follow-up task will only display the currently available options. If you are unsure which tasks are connected, you can review the Dependencies section at the bottom of the Task Setup page.
• What happens if a participant skips the related task?
  
  • If a participant skips the related task for any reason (e.g., it was optional or hidden by segmentation), the follow-up task that relies on their response will be hidden from that participant. The related task must be completed for the follow-up task to be shown.
• Can I pipe a response from a Task later in the sequence?
  
  • As a best practice, we strongly recommend only inserting responses from previous tasks only. Sourcing an inserted response from a future task or activity may lead to participants skipping over the current task.
• How does Text Piping work if my study uses the "Activity Dates Only" sequence?
  
  • As a best practice, your study's Activity Sequence should be set to “Forced Sequence” when piping responses across Activities. If "Activity Dates Only" is used, participants could complete the follow-up Activity before the source Activity, causing the follow-up task to be skipped.
• Can I pipe responses directly into poll choices or grid rows?
  
  • Currently, Text Piping only supports inserting responses into the Task Instructions field. Piping responses directly into task options (such as Poll choices or Grid rows) is not yet available.