Problem with participant notifications

Hey Mohammad,

the same problem is occuring again for the same participant.
Is it due to an error again?

Kind regards,
Abdallah

Dear Mohammad,

Participant 37940 in our study is having the same problem.
He changed the notification settings but is still not receiving any notifications.
Is it due to an error?

Kind regards,
Abdallah

Hey @m.hashemian ,

Participants 37940 (already wrote about this 18 days ago) and 38258 are having the same problem.
Can you look into it please?

Kind regards,
Abdallah

@abdallah.al-janabi I moved these questions to a new topic, because it was not related to the old topic you had used.

Can you please provide more details? You need to mention:

  • Participant ID
  • Survey ID
  • The time of the notification that was supposed to be issued and was not issued.

And any other details that is available.

Thanks.

Dear @m.hashemian ,

The survey ID is 1413 and the participant ID’s are 37940 and 38258.
Both have not received their notifications for several days but find a survey waiting when opening the app. They don’t know the exact time.

Kind regards,
Abdallah

Hi @abdallah.al-janabi

We tested your study on a Huawei Android device, similar to the devices these two participants are using. The notifications were prompted just fine. Although we did not wait a few days.

Does other people in the study experience the same issue?

Bests,
Mohammad

Dear @m.hashemian ,

Yes, in fact I had the same issue but gave up on it (ID 35765).
In this case you told me in an earlier post from the 8th of March that there was a mistake on your backend server code. Maybe this is the same issue here? However there were more cases in which this was the case, but sometimes it resolved itself after re-downloading the studies/updating them.
How can we solve this now?

Kind regards,
Abdallah

If there is an issue in the app, all participants get impacted. Or at least all participants on a certain platform (Android or iOS), get impacted. That was the case with Mar. 8th as well.

All the users you mentioned above, including your own test account, are using an Android device. I’m trying to find out if this means no Android user in your study is receiving notifications. When we tested your study on an Android device, the notifications were prompted just fine.

Can you tell me if this issue is impacting everyone in the study, or just the participants you listed above?

Thanks

@m.hashemian

It seems to impact a lot of participants from time to time. It resolves itself though for some, and for others not.
We often have cases where participants have NA’s in their session data for days. When we contact them they describe the issue I laid out to you. So, no it does not impact everyone, but also not only the ones listed above. I am trying to contact some participants with missing session data to see if they have the same issue.

What I’m trying to explain is that when there is an issue in the app, all participants get impacted. Cases like this, where a few participants are impacted, almost always comes down to some setting or configuration of the phone. We do not have access to anyone’s phone, and our log system does not upload every single configuration on their phone, so it’s hard for me to tell you what happens in their phone regarding the notification.

We are working on explaining as much as possible either through Participant Audit Logs or Device Specific settings. But we cannot explain the exact steps a single participant should take on their phone.

If you think this is impacting the study negatively, one option is to switch to SMS or email notifications in addition to the in-app notifications. The delivery of SMS and email is independent of phone settings and their delivery can be fully tracked.

Hope it helps

@m.hashemian

Is there a way to change the survey notifications to SMS only for the select participants that are affected? The phone settings are not the problem as we had participants check that and notifications are usually turned on everywhere

@m.hashemian

We just received this e-mail which is a good example:

“Btw I wanted to let you know that sometimes the Ethica app stops working and doesn’t send out notifications, I have to remember to open it myself to fill in the questionnaire and then it starts sending notifications again. Is there something I can do to fix this?”

This came from participant 38253. This occured to me as well when signed in as a participant (35765), so it cannot be due to the settings. Back then you mentioned an error in the code. Does this help you to identify the issue?

@abdallah.al-janabi I’m sure if you read this link, you will see why this happens, and what participants need to do to prevent it. There is a page specifically for Huawei.

I forgot to mention @abdallah.al-janabi if you want to enable SMS notifications only on a subset of participants, please contact our support and they can set this up. You would need to:

  1. Update your survey and add the SMS to all notifications.
  2. Provide the phone number of all participants who you want to receive this notification.

Hope it helps

Dear @m.hashemian ,

I would like to try it out on me as a participant first before applying it to the others (ID 35765).
How can I contact the support? I can’t seem to find a contact, but I messaged you my phone number.

Kind regards,
Abdallah