Adding Links as Whiteboards

Links can be added as whiteboards directly in the question creation window during your guide programming, which is what this article will cover.

 

Links can also be added and managed ahead of time in the Add/Edit Whiteboards section, found in the Project Setup tab of your discussion Board, and chosen from your media library when programming your guide.

 

 

To add links as Whiteboards while programming your discussion guide, navigate to the Moderator Guide page of the Project Setup tab.

 

 

Edit an existing question or click Add Question to open the question editing window.

 

 

 

With the Add/Edit Question window open, scroll down to the Whiteboard section, and in the Select Media dropdown menu, choose Add Link.

 

The Add Link window contains fields for a link Display Name, and the URL you need participants to go to.  If you are inputting variables into the URL to pass data back into your survey/online exercise you will also need to select the Variable Substitution checkbox in order to ensure the system fills the variables you set up.

 

Click Save when you are done filling out the fields, and you will have the whiteboard added to this question.  You can then choose to open the whiteboard exercise in a new window, inline, or both.

At this time, we recommend that whiteboard exercises and all weblinks open in a new window as it limits the number of errors participants get from moving from a secure website to another and makes navigation a bit easier. 

 

Variables

When adding in certain whiteboard exercises, it may be necessary to auto-capture some participant details to match back data from the discussion board to the database.  In order to do this, we have set up a number of variables that you can add into a URL in order to capture and save this data back into the database of your exercise.

Below is the full list of variables that you can pass through the URL of a link in the discussion board software.

Username and Screen Name = [USERINFO]

Screen Name = [SCREENNAME]

When they last logged in = [LASTLOGIN]

The User ID in the discussion board software (not seen publicly) = [USERID]

Username = [USERNAME]

User Status (disabled or active) = [USERSTATUS]

User Type (Moderator, Observer or Participant) = [USERTYPE]

Open time of the board = [STARTTIME]

Close time of the board = [CLOSETIME]

Project Room Number= [ROOMNUMBER]

Project Name = [PROJNAME]

Project Number = [PROJNUM]

Project Type = [PROJTYPE]

Project Status (Open or Closed) = [PROJSTATUS]

Company ID = [BLDRID]

Company Number = [BLDRNUM]

You will most likely only use a couple of the above listed variables. Most commonly used in the screen name variable that passes through the participant’s screen name into your survey/exercise database.  

If you are using the same exercise in multiple groups you may want to consider appending the Project Number to the Screen name in order to ensure that people have unique variables across all projects.

To add in a variable to a whiteboard exercise link take the link and then add in the above variable where it is needed in the URL.  For example:

https://gosurveys.itracks.com/survey/selfserve/11c9/190207?screenname=[SCREENNAME]&group=[ACTIVITYNAME]

The variables for real time activities are different. Please click here for a list of variables that can be used in these platforms.