When the time comes to analyse your Typeform survey results, you may want to link the survey results with the user registration data on the platform. This article explains you how to do this (before you launch your survey!).
When a registered user takes a Typeform survey, you can automatically add either their email or their user ID to the survey results, by including Hidden Fields when creating your survey.
To make sure you can link the answers in your Typeform survey to the registered users on your platform, you need to take the following steps (as explained below), before you launch your survey!
add hidden fields to your Typeform survey
add the Typeform survey link to a project or project timeline phase.
Make sure that the survey is only accessible for 'registered users'.
If you want to be able to make the link, this means that people have to register and be logged in to be able to fill in the survey.
Side note 1: Hidden fields won't work when you embed a Typeform survey in the content builder. You can only use hidden fields when you embed a Typeform survey after choosing 'Create an external survey' as method in your project (phase).
Side note 2: if you want to keep the barrier for filling in your survey as low as possible, and you don't necessarily need to be able to link the survey answers to the user registration data on the platform, you can also decide to just include a question to ask for participants' e-mail addresses in the survey itself, or not ask for an e-mail address at all. It all depends on which data you need and what you want to do with them!
However, if you want to be able to avoid double entries, then you will at least need to ask for an e-mail address to be able to filter out any duplicates.
1. Inside your Typeform survey, make sure you add 'hidden fields'
1.1/ For 'New' Typeforms (created after 2021)
You can set up hidden fields following the steps below:
On the right in the admin panel, click on "Logic" > Advanced > Hidden fields
2. Fill in "@user_id" or “@email” and click on "Save".
Important: always click on “Publish” on the top right corner of the screen after making any changes to update your survey.
1.2/ For 'Classic Builder' Typeforms (created before 2021)
You can set up hidden fields following the steps below:
On the left panel where you choose your question types, select “Hidden fields”
Add either 'email' or 'user_id' to the top of the page to add the user data to your survey
Again, don't forget to publish your changes in Typeform!
2. Embed the Typeform survey link in your project (phase)
Read this article on how to easily embed your link in the platform.
Important: if you are using hidden fields, remove the end of the link before copying the embed URL. For instance:
when using "user_id" as a hidden field, your embed url should not be https://citizenlabco.typeform.com/to/kOM3aayD#user_id=xxxxx but https://citizenlabco.typeform.com/to/kOM3aayD instead.
when using 'email' as a hidden field, your embed url should not be 'https://citizenlabco.typeform.com/to/tGKr9twl?email=xxxxx' but 'https://citizenlabco.typeform.com/to/tGKr9twl' instead.
3. On your platform, make sure you give participation rights to the survey to 'registered users' only
This article explains you how to restrict rights to a project.
If the group 'registered users' doesn't exist yet, first create this 'smart group' of users (condition 'registration date is not empty'). In this article you can read more on how to create a smart group.
The group will now appear in the dropdown of the Access Permissions:
You're done now. CitizenLab will now pass down the email or user ID from signed in users. You can then download the survey results either from your CitizenLab platform, or from Typeform directly.
Need help or support? Don’t hesitate to get in touch via support@citizenlab.co.