Advanced Tutorial - ID Tracking

You can send email messages to people, asking them to fill out a form that you've posted on the web. With a few steps, however, you can also have the web form expect those people and perform ID Tracking! Please read all these instructions before you begin.

Instructions:

  1. Save your form as myproject.ezf. For each person who will answer the form, add a record to the database. You may also import data from an address book or another table. Any data you import into the database will be used to preset each person's responses.

  2. Create a form and select Publish Create a web form. Configure your site and select, Save in ASCII on the server. Select Initialize the web site with the project data.

  3. For each record in the database, make up a user name and password. These should go in the IFMUID and IFMUID1 columns, respectively. You can create random user names and passwords by selecting Generate random IDs if necessary on the Web form setup page (do this after you create blank records in the database.

    Note: Set your web form up to test first, so you know all of the steps before creating a large list.

  4. Upload all the files that EZSurvey creates to your web site and follow the instructions for accessing the survey.

  5. Use these instructions to create a mailmerge letter. It will look something like this:

    Dear (NAME),

    Please fill out this form on the web by clicking on this URL:
    http://www.raosoft.com/ezs.exe?DATABASE=db&IFMUID={IFMUID}&IFMUID1={IFMUID1}

    The text in bold is what you need to add to the URL that EZSurvey generates. Save this as a text file, myproject.txt.

  6. Select Email Bulk email from the main menu. If the file is in the same directory as EZSurvey, type in the filename myproject.txt. If the file is not in the same directory, type in the full path to the file, starting with the drive letter. (C:\My Documents\myproject.txt) This path must be exact, an error will cause the wizard to fail. Then select the Treat this file as a mail merge box. Select the OK button. You will then be asked to choose a file. Pick the project database, myproject.dbf. The mail will get sent to everyone on the list whose STATUS row is blank. After the mail is sent, you will see an error log, and the STATUS rows will be updated to reflect those who have been sent their message.

See also...