How to Merge/Pipe Text into Surveys

What is Merging?

Merging (also called piping) allows you to take text from one source and merge or pipe it into another source. Text can be merged from previous questions, contact profile properties, or response properties (such as the survey date or language). Text can be merged into survey questions, survey answer choices, survey message items, or email alerts/invitations.

This guide demonstrates a few different ways in which you can use the Text Merge feature to personalize your survey.

Text Merge Sources

You can merge text into your survey from various sources, including:

• Questions: Respondents’ answers to previous survey items (*note that the question you are merging must be on a previous page).
• Contact Profile Properties: Profile properties that are stored in your Contact records such as First Name, Last Name, and Email Address.
• Response Properties: Information related to the individual survey response, such as Survey Score, Current Date, Language, etc.

Merging Answers from Previous Questions

1. Add the question you want to merge an answer from.

‍

2. Add the question or message item you want to merge your previous answer into.

NOTE: When merging text from a previous question, the source for the merged text must be located on a previous page.

‍

3. Click the Merge icon (the @ button) and choose the question from step 1.

This will add a merge code to your survey that starts with @@.

‍

4. When your respondent takes your survey, that merge code will be replaced with their actual answer from the question in step 1.

‍

Merging Contact Profile Properties

1. Add your Contacts.

This method assumes you have already added contacts in the main Contacts area of Checkbox. If you need help with this step, please see our guides on adding a single contact or importing contacts.

2. Add the question, message item, or invitation that you want to merge the Contact information into.

For this example we are going to merge First Name into our email invitation, but the process is the same for merging into a survey.

3. Click the Merge icon (the @ button) and choose the Profile Property you want to merge.

This will add a merge code to your survey that starts with @@.
‍

4. When your respondent takes your survey, that merge code will be replaced with the actual data from their contact profile.

Merging Response Properties

1. Add the question, message item, or invitation that you want to merge the Contact information into.

For this example we are going to merge the survey score into a Message Item.

‍

2. Click the Merge icon (the @ button) and choose the Response Property you want to merge into your survey or invitation.

This will add a merge code to your survey that starts with @@.

‍

3. When your respondent takes your survey, that merge code will be replaced with their actual answer from the question in step 1.

‍