Publication Links QR code - KL-Psychological-Methodology/ESMira GitHub Wiki
Publication, Links & QR code
After you are done setting up the study, this is the place where you make sure participants can find and join your study.
Access keys
You can add one or more access keys that will be needed to find and join your study. If you do not add an access key, then the study will be publicly visible.
Note: You can add several access keys that link to your study. The access key, a participant used to join the study, will be saved in the event.csv.
Note: Different studies can share the same access keys.
Qr codes
You can create a QR code that can be quickly scanned by participants to join the study. For the ESMira app, it does not matter which QR code is scanned. They all lead to the study. But you can control where the QR code leads when it is scanned by third party QR scanner apps.
Urls to web version
These urls that are also incorporated into the QR code. If you want to give participants the option to use the web version of ESMira, you can give them direct links to either the overview of the study or directly to a specific questionnaire. Three different types of urls are generated:
Study information
Examples:
www.example.com/1234
www.example.com/accessKey
www.example.com/1234-accessKey
A page that shows the study information and a list of all available questionnaires. This url has three possible formats:
https://example.com/[STUDY ID]: When the study does not use any access key.https://example.com/[ACCESS KEY]orhttps://example.com/[STUDY ID]-[ACCESS KEY](see Difference between Links section.)
App installation instructions
Examples:
www.example.com/app-1234
www.example.com/app-accessKey
www.example.com/app-1234-accessKey
A page with automatically generated instructions on how to install the ESMira app on Android or iOS. The additional app installation instructions are shown at the beginning of the page. This url has three possible formats:
https://example.com/app-[STUDY ID]: When the study does not use any access key.https://example.com/app-[ACCESS KEY]or
https://example.com/app-[STUDY ID]-[ACCESS KEY](see Difference between Links section.)
Direct link to a specific questionnaire
Examples:
www.example.com/survey-12345
www.example.com/survey-12345-accessKey
A direct link to a specific questionnaire of the study. If the participant opens the questionnaire for the first time, the participant is asked to accept the informed consent (if one is given in study information) and provide a user id. This url has two possible formats:
https://example.com/survey-[STUDY ID]: When the study does not use any access key.https://example.com/survey-[STUDY ID]-[ACCESS KEY]: When the study needs an access key.
Note: If the web version is disabled in Availability and runtime, all links will automatically lead to the "App installation instructions".
Fallback parameter
If your server is set up to use the Fallback System (and your study is not set to opt-out of it), then some of the links include a fallback parameter. The resulting link will have ?fallback=[FALLBACK DATA] appended, e.g. https://example.com/app-[STUDY ID]?fallback=[FALLBACK DATA]. If you do not see this parameter, then your server most likely does not have a fallback set up.
The link will work with or without that parameter, as browsers will simply ignore it. However, the benefit of including it is that the ESMira smartphone application is capable of using the data in that parameter to retrieve the study configuration from the fallback server in case the server is not reachable.
Difference between Links with Access Key and Links with Study Id
If you specify an access key you will have two link formats to choose from, links including just the access key (e.g., https://example.com/app-[ACCESS KEY]) or links including both the access key and the study id (e.g., https://example.com/app-[STUDY ID]-[ACCESS KEY]). The difference is that the latter will always lead to the specific study. The link including only the access key may work differently, depending on whether there are multiple published studies with that access key on the server or not. If this study is the only study with that particular access key, then both links work the same way. If there are multiple studies then the link containing just the access key will lead to a list of those studies the user can pick from (both on the server and in the application).