Recollective Tips and Tricks Series

Ramius is very proud of the high level of customer service we provide to our clients. For example, every Recollective site that is commissioned is given a comprehensive "Pre-Launch Check" by one of our Implementation Consultants. Having done these site checks for almost a year now, we thought it would be a great idea to share some of the best tips and tricks we know and describe how to avoid making mistakes when configuring your Recollective site. Each month we will try to post a couple of new tips. We hope you find them useful! Tip #1 - Sending Email Address and Support Contacts By far, the most commonly forgotten settings are the Sending Email Address and Support Contact fields, both found in Site Administration > Site Setup > Basic Settings: For the Sending Email Address*, the default address is an unmonitored Ramius account, so it is highly advisable to update this setting. The Sending Email Address has two roles:

• It is the default address all messages from the system appear to be sent from. Participants can be told to look out for emails from this address and save the address in their contacts to ensure messages aren’t lost in spam or junk filters.
• It is the address that will capture any bounceback notifications.

*Note: if this Sending Email Address is updated, we highly recommended you set up an SPF record to ensure notifications are delivered properly. Here are instructions for setting up an SPF record. The Support Contact identifies who participants will email if they have difficulty logging in. If they cannot login they will typically click the Help button which launches their email client. They send an email to whichever address is listed here, so it is very important to update this field to ensure that any participants experiencing login difficulties are brought to your attention and given assistance. Tip #2 - Text / Photo Task Type Another common oversight is to allow participants the option of uploading a photo as part of a task response (for the Text/Photo task type) without instructions to do so. The quick fix for this is simple: don't overlook the option to disable photo attachments when setting up the task: Unchecking the Photo Attachments box (as displayed above) in task setup will disable the photo attachments box from appearing when participants are responding to a Text/Photo task. I always recommend disabling this box if participants have not been given instructions for quantity and image type. Ignoring this best practice doesn’t hugely impact the study, however it may cause some confusion for participants and trigger support emails. Our experience indicates that when instructions and next steps are clear, your participants have more time to focus on the study and less time to be distracted with avoidable questions. Thanks! Lyndsay.