All Qualtrics senders should be aware of changes coming to how some email providers enforce new spam-prevention policies.

What is the change?
This change is part of a larger initiative from Google and Yahoo to be more strict on complaint rates and spam prevention to reduce the number of spam emails their users receive and improve email security. How much these changes impact you depends on your role(s) with Ohio State and how you are using outside email services with your Ohio State email accounts. Learn what actions you can take beyond Qualtrics emails at OTDI’s site.

To make sure our messages don’t get blocked, OTDI will be making changes to certain Qualtrics settings.

What do I need to know?
1. OTDI will be changing the Qualtrics’ default From Address @qemailserver.com to @survey.osu.edu on Tuesday, January 30, 2024.
2. The change will not impact existing surveys/notifications that use the Qualtrics default @qemailserver as both domains meet DMARC requirements.

It is best practice to use @survey.osu.edu, please check your distribution emails and consider updating their notification to use this domain. To verify your distribution emails:

1. Open the project you would like to update.
2. From the selection tabs at the top of the page, please select Distributions
3. Select Emails on the right side of the page
4. Click on “+ Compose Email” and make sure the From Address is using @survey.osu.edu

Optional: review existing distribution (these cannot be updated, new distribution email must be created)

What if I have questions?
If you have questions about implementing these new requirements or what they mean for your experience with Qualtrics, please refer to our Email support documentation(link is external). If you cannot find an answer, please email OTDI-SurveySupport@osu.edu.

NOTE: ***This only impact XM Community***

What’s changing?

We use a third-party platform provider to power the XM Community. We are moving to a NEW and different third-party platform provider in an effort to better serve the needs of the XM Community. For those who are curious, the new platform is powered by inSided (owned by Gainsight).

Will this change be disruptive or involve any downtime for customers?

Unfortunately, yes. Due to vendor circumstances outside of our control, there will be downtime for the XM Community – potentially as much as two weeks. This is due to vendor migration delays. We are working closely with the new vendor to reduce this downtime as much as we possibly can. You can check the Qualtrics Status Page during the downtime and subscribe to receive updates, as well.

Another email will be sent in April once things are up and running to let you know when you can come experience the new Community!

For those of you who have experience in vendor change and management, you’re probably aware that the process sometimes comes with a few bumps in the road. We appreciate your patience while we work hard to bring you a new and improved XM Community experience as soon as possible!

Can I contact the XM Community team during this downtime with questions or concerns?

Yes, you can email Michael Cooksey, Head of XM Community: mcooksey@qualtrics.com

See the announcement below from Qualtrics to ensure uninterrupted service:

At Qualtrics, we are committed to providing our customers with best-in-class security. As part of this commitment, we are currently transitioning our systems to HTTPS.

This security transition will prevent your users from accessing Qualtrics via URLs that including ‘”www”. Ongoing, all access to Qualtrics will require a secure URL that incorporates HTTPS.  Your current branded URL osu.qualtrics.com will continue to work as intended. However, if your user tries to enter Qualtrics via www.osu.qualtrics.com, they will receive an error message.

The security update will occur on June 12, 2017.

June 6th, 2017

• Brandon Allen – Qualtrics

Brandon will present the new Statwing feature for performing data analysis in Qualtrics.  The meeting information is listed below. Feel free to join online and/or by phone.

Join from PC, Mac, Linux, iOS or Android: https://qualtrics.zoom.us/j/582166815
Or iPhone one-tap: 16465588656,582166815# or 14086380968,582166815#

Or Telephone:
Dial: +1 646 558 8656 (US Toll) or +1 408 638 0968 (US Toll)
+1 855 880 1246 (US Toll Free)
+1 877 369 0926 (US Toll Free)

Meeting ID: 582 166 815
April 4^th, 2017

• Brandon Allen – Qualtrics

He will present the new AXM Qualtrics platform.

Join from PC, Mac, Linux, iOS or Android: https://qualtrics.zoom.us/j/920474571
Or iPhone one-tap: 16465588656,920474571# or 14086380968,920474571#

Or Telephone:

Dial: +1 646 558 8656 (US Toll) or +1 408 638 0968 (US Toll)

+1 855 880 1246 (US Toll Free)

+1 877 369 0926 (US Toll Free)

Meeting ID: 920 474 571

Show & Tell – Previous Discussions

September 13^th, 2016

• Amanda Rinehart – Assistant Professor and Data Management Librarian. Amanda discussed about data management plans and best practices in managing Qualtrics data.
• John Strawn – OAA Web Communication Specialist. John presented useful Microsoft tools for automating reports from Qualtrics data.

October 4^th, 2016

• Amanda Baker and Ben Andrews, Research Analysts in the Center for the Study of Student Life. They discussed survey fatigue and the use of incentives in survey research.

November 1^st, 2016

• Mary Higginbotham (Pharmacy), Heather Lansky (EHE), Jen Abbruzzese (Wexner), Mary Shook (James) and Lauren Haas-Gehres (Social Work)

They covered the following topics:

• onboarding with Qualtrics within your division.
• managing users within your division.
• ideas for in-house training.
• managing groups within your division.

December 6^th, 2016

• Timothy Huerta – Associate Professor, College of Medicine, College of Public Health. He presented about his experience in using Qualtrics APIs for advanced data management.

February 7^th, 2017

• William Ashley – Communication Specialist
• Mary-Butler Ravneberg – HR Data Analyst

They spoke on the collaborative approach OHR takes to survey data, including survey process and reporting, examples of their survey partnerships, and upcoming projects.

March 7^th, 2017

• Peter Bossley – Director, Digital Accessibility Center
• Laura Fathauer – Digital Accessibility Center GA
• Rahim Abdi – OCIO Accessibility Analyst

They will spoke on the following topics:

• ADA / OSU Digital Accessibility policy
• Accessible Technology in principle and in theory
• Universal design
• Qualtrics survey examples and benchmarking

From: OSU Qualtrics Brand Administrators and OSU-OCIO Email Team

To: All OSU Qualtrics Users

Within the past few months we evaluated the best options to address issues related with emails distributed directly out of Qualtrics and being captured into recipients’ SPAM email boxes. In order to deal with these situations, we are planning to change the “From” email address in Qualtrics to qualtrics@osu.edu instead of the current email noreply@qualtrics-research.com

qualtrics@osu.edu is an OSU managed email. This email will not be associated with any particular survey or research protocols.

The timelines for this change are planned for the week of January 3 – 6, 2017.

We anticipate there will be no interruption to any survey protocols. We advise users to check their active surveys/projects/protocols during the week of January 9 – 13, 2017 to make sure that everything is working properly.

OSU-Email team and Qualtrics Technical team will perform testing right after the change. If the testing fail, we will resume to using the current “From” email: noreply@qualtrics-research.com

The Brand Administrators encouraged the Division Administrators to send this information to their users.

Additional resources can be found here:

–        Avoid being marked as Spam

–        Using a Custom From Address

–        Email Distribution Management

Please let us know if you have any questions.

Best,

The OSU Qualtrics Brand Administrators

RESULTS

The Qualtrics Brand Administrators and OSU-OCIO Email Team performed additional testing after the change of the “From Email” address in Qualtrics.

Unfortunately, there were a couple changes that did not work as planned:

• Using the From Email as qualtrics@osu.edu displays differently based on how the survey is distributed to respondents. This creates confusion for respondents and increase the likelihood they would delete survey emails or view them as spam, rather than open and participate in the surveys.
• We identified a maximum threshold for outgoing emails where the From Name was set to qualtrics@osu.edu. This limitation is set by Microsoft as 10,000 emails per day. There are caveats around what counts toward this limitation, but it is too small for larger survey projects, and monitoring and properly managing this limitation for all OSU Qualtrics users is not feasible at this time.

Based on the negative impacts to Qualtrics users that the aforementioned findings represent, the Brand Administrators asked Qualtrics to back out the change. The Qualtrics system now works as it did before with respect to the From Name field.

Backing out the change means that Qualtrics users will need to take additional protocols and steps to increase deliverability of their surveys. The best practices shared in the resources below should be used by Qualtrics users when creating and distributing surveys:

–        Avoid being marked as Spam

–        Email Distribution Management

Best,

The OSU Qualtrics Brand Administrators

Can I contact Qualtrics Support over the holidays? Absolutely!

+1-800-340-9194   Contact Support

Support hours (in Mountain Time) are listed below:

Be a presenter at our monthly “Show & Tell” discussions.

All discussions will be held in 352 Classroom at Research Commons, 3rd Floor of 18th Avenue Library. from 12 – 1 PM.

Sharing experience and knowledge is what makes the OSU Qualtrics User Group a great community. So please do your part and tell others your Qualtrics tips and tricks during these brown bag discussions.

Submitting a presentation idea is easy. Just email us qualtricsbrandadmins@osu.edu, your title, topic, idea or tip, no later than a week prior each meeting.

We look forward to hearing from you!

Show & Tell – Upcoming Discussions, 2017

February 7th

March 7th

April 4th

May 2nd

June 6th

August 1st

September 5th

October 3rd

November 7th

December 5th

Two additional informational sessions are scheduled for Division Administrators on September 7 and 13. These sessions are mainly intended for those Division Administrators who did not have a chance to attend any of the previously scheduled sessions.

Each session will cover the same information:

• Close the loop on outstanding questions and concerns from last session
• Interactive discussion around user types and upgrade codes
• Demo of key aspects of the Qualtrics administrative tab
• Division Administrator action items

An email containing the dates, times and additional information was sent by the OSU Qualtrics Brand Administrators group to those Division Administrators who did not attend any of the previously scheduled sessions.

If you are a Division Administrator, didn’t attend any of the previously scheduled sessions and did not receive the email sent on August 11^th, please contact us.

The following screenshots include the features currently available under the OSU Qualtrics License. The grayed out features are not available under the current license. For enabling any of the available features, users should contact their division administrators. Detailed description of these features is available at this link: https://www.qualtrics.com/support/

Two informational sessions are scheduled for Division Administrators on June 8 and 22. Division Administrators are asked to attend one of the two sessions if their schedules permit.

Each session will cover the same information:

• Close the loop on outstanding questions and concerns from last session
• Interactive discussion around user types and upgrade codes
• Demo of key aspects of the Qualtrics administrative tab
• Division Administrator action items

An email was sent by the OSU Qualtrics Brand Administrators group on May 27 to all Qualtrics Division Administrators with dates, times, location and additional information.

If you are a Division Administrator and did not receive the email sent May 27, please contact us.