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Responses in Progress

About Responses in Progress

Responses in progress are responses that have been started but not submitted. This includes both clicked links that have not been filled out and those that are partially filled out, but not submitted.

Responses in progress become recorded responses when:

A respondent submits a survey
A survey is manually closed from the Responses in Progress page
A survey or survey session expires

While still in the Responses in Progress page, you can view, close, or delete these responses.

Qtip: In most projects, such as surveys, engagement, or conjoints, responses in progress are found in the Data section of the Data & Analysis tab. In 360 projects, this page is found in the Data tab.

Viewing Responses in Progress

View any active survey sessions by clicking Responses in Progress. For every response in progress, there will be 11 pieces of information in the response viewer:

Survey Session ID: The internal ID used to track the respondent’s answer information.
IP Address: The IP Address of the respondent. This will not appear if the survey is completely anonymized.
First Name, Last Name, and Email: If the respondents were emailed the survey, authenticated into the survey, or were given personal links, their first names, last names, and emails will appear as they do in the contact list.

External Reference: If the respondents were emailed the survey, authenticated into the survey, or were given personal links, their External Data References will appear here as they do in the contact list.
Start Time: The date and time the respondent first clicked on the survey link.
Last Activity: The date and time the respondent last switched pages in the survey.
Expires: The last date and time the respondent will be able to access the survey if they don’t open their survey link again.
Qtip: To learn more about where this expiration date comes from, view our Incomplete Survey Responses page.
Last Question: The last question the respondent answered.
Progress: The percentage of survey questions the respondent has covered thus far.
Qtip: All questions are used to calculate a respondent’s progress, regardless of whether the respondent qualified to see all questions. If a question is skipped, passing that question will still increment the respondent’s progress.

You can also select which of this information you’d like to see on the page by selecting Column chooser.

Qtip: It’s important to note that the First Name, Last Name, Email, and External Reference fields are not relevant when viewing responses in progress for engagement, lifecycle, ad hoc employee research, and 360 projects. Although similarly named, these fields do not populate with a participant’s name and email in Employee Experience projects, and instead pull data from XM Directory contact lists.

To view an individual Response in Progress

Navigate to the Data section of the Data & Analysis tab and select Responses in Progress.
Click the Survey Session ID.
View the partial response information.

Closing Responses in Progress

Attention: Make sure that the Incomplete survey response settings in your survey options is not set to delete responses. If it is, responses in progress will be deleted upon closing. This survey setting is determined by the current version of the survey, regardless if it’s published or not.

Navigate to the Responses in Progress view of the Data section in the Data & Analysis tab and select the checkbox for the response you you would like to close.
Select the close response icon.
Select the I am sure I want to close Response checkbox and click the close response button.

Qtip: Qualtrics doesn’t save empty responses, so if a participant hasn’t answered any questions and you close their response, it will be deleted instead of saved in Recorded Responses.

Qtip: The amount of time it takes to close responses is directly proportional to the number of responses in progress. While the responses are queued, they can still be accessed by respondents.

After a response in progress is closed, it will be listed in the Recorded Responses and will no longer be accessible to the respondent to complete.

Deleting Responses in Progress

Once you delete a response in progress, the respondent can start over with the same individual link. Once a response in progress is deleted, the timer for a response to close itself is reset.

Warning: Once a response in progress is deleted, the information is irretrievable, so be sure you want to delete it!

Navigate to the Responses in Progress view of the Data section in the Data & Analysis tab and select the checkbox for the response you want to delete.
Select the trash icon.
Select the I am sure I want to delete Response checkbox and click the delete response button.

Searching Responses in Progress

You can search for a particular response in progress using the search functionality found at the top of the page. Simply click the the Add Filter button and fill out the search parameters. You can filter by name, email, External Data Reference, Start Time, Last Activity, Last Question, or Progress.

See exporting data for more information about available export options.

Downloading Responses in Progress

You can export your responses in progress. To do so, go to Responses in Progress, find the Export Data dropdown, and select Export Data.

Attention: Depending on the size of your survey and the number of responses in progress you have, the export may time out before it can complete. If this is the case, you will need to close your responses in progress and then export the data from recorded responses. To only export incomplete responses from recorded responses, filter your data for Survey Metadata – Finished is False.

Qtip: When downloading Responses in Progress, your export file will not contain the Last Question field.

Downloading a single response in progress

If you don’t want to export all of your responses at once, a single response in progress can be exported via a PDF.

To do so, navigate to Responses in Progress, and click on the Survey Session ID in the column of the same name.
Once the survey session is opened, click on Export to PDF at the top of the pop-up window. The session will download as a PDF to your device.

Empty Responses

Responses in Progress in which the respondent’s progress is 0% are not saved by Qualtrics when they are closed. This functionality ignores your incomplete survey response settings; even if you set your incomplete response setting to record (as opposed to delete), Qualtrics will not record the response if it is at 0% progress when it closes.

Your respondent’s progress increments when they navigate through your survey’s pages. If a respondent does not continue past the first page of your survey, their progress will be 0%. Likewise, if a 1-page survey is started and not completed by a respondent but is then closed, their response will be deleted as an empty response (since no progress was saved). We recommend adding page breaks regularly throughout your survey to ensure your respondent’s progress is saved.

can we clarify that an “empty” response means everything is empty (question responses, embedded data, etc.) and that sometimes a response isn’t totally empty even though no questions are answered (eg; if embedded data is being set/associated with the response in the flow).

Attention: Empty responses are responses where there is no data recorded at all, including question responses, embedded data, and more. If a respondent doesn’t answer any questions but there is embedded data set for their response, this response will not be considered empty.

Qtip: Due to how the data is processed, inline email questions do not follow this rule. If a respondent answers your inline email question, but does not progress further in your survey, their response will still be recorded. This is true even if the response is at 0% progress.