'Save and return' feature

The 'save and return' feature allows respondents to come back to their incomplete survey response at a later date without losing the information they've already entered as part of their response.

The user must have cookies enabled in their web browser to use this feature, and the feature is not available for responses that have already been completed and submitted.

You can select any of the below points to help you navigate to a section in this article:

• Step 1 - select the 'Save and come back later...'
• Step 2 - provide an email address
• Step 3 - an email will be sent to the respondent
• Troubleshooting
• A note on the default email address question

Step 1

At the bottom of each survey page, people can select the 'Save and come back later...' button, which looks like this:

In order to use this button, respondents will need to have completed any 'required' answer fields on that page (which is another reason why we recommend only making questions 'required' when necessary).

Step 2

The respondent is then asked to provide an email address.

Please be aware, any email address entered in the field on the 'Save and return' page will not be stored as response data in Citizen Space, it is just used to send the email. This is so responses can remain anonymous.

After selecting ‘save and send email’ the respondent is shown information that they can make a note of, which will allow them to return to their incomplete response whenever they choose. This information will also be in their ‘save and return’ email.

Step 3

An email from your Citizen Space site will be sent to the respondent with the subject line: 'Your return code' followed by their Response ID. This email contains a unique link that allows them to return to their incomplete response any time until the activity closes. Once the activity is closed, the link will direct respondents to the activity page and they will receive a message saying “This activity is now closed.”

If the activity open date is extended, the link will still work. The link will only be invalid if the activity URL is changed, for example, if the activity is changed from a public to a private activity and vice versa.

Troubleshooting

Unfortunately — like a lot of emails — save and return emails can sometimes go into people's junk mail folders, or get deleted by your respondents accidentally.  

If a respondent gets in touch with you to say that they don't have their return details or 'save and return' email, we can sometimes retrieve their incomplete response and send out an email link to them if you contact us via the Delib support email address. However, there are a few things we need to know to be able to safely do this:

• We need the URL and title of the activity they were responding to, so that we can get straight to the right place to begin looking.
• We need some kind of identifying information to be able to accurately find their response. The best thing we could get from you/your respondent would be their response ID, which is given to them on screen when they request a save and return link. If you or they don't have that, we need a way to prove the incomplete response is theirs by matching details given in the response with details they provide to you. This might be:
  • email address — this can also sometimes allow us to check if an email went out to that address
  • respondent's name
  • organisation name
  • the date and time the respondent was responding and requested a save and return link
  • anything unique they remember writing in their response or any other identifying information.

Identifying incomplete responses can be a bit like trying to find a needle in a haystack, so the more evidence you can give us, the better. If we can't find a way to be sure a response belongs to that person, we can't risk sending out a save and return link manually so this is really important to get right.

Please note, we aren't able to manually generate save and return links once your activity is closed.

A note on the default email address question

There are 3 default questions in each survey in Citizen Space. If you have included the default email address question in your survey and the respondent has answered it, then they will not need to type in their email address again if they use the 'save and return' feature as the email address box will be pre-populated with their email address.