What’s new in UNICOM Intelligence Interviewer

The UNICOM Intelligence Interviewer - Server Email activity introduces these new features:

All emails entered in the Email activity user interface are validated against the customer configurable EmailValidationExpression DPM property.

User friendly text can now be defined for the From and Reply To email addresses in the email header. For example, you can specify Survey from Customer for the invitations@customer.com From email address. Participants would then see “from: “Survey from Customer” invitations@customer.com” in the email header. The email header text strings are translatable. For more information, see Creating a new job.

Users can now select existing email body translations, or create new translations. Users are also provided the option of an HTML or plain text editor when editing the email body text. For more information, see Creating a new job.

A more advanced query editor for participant selection and the user interface allows users to view the query output. For more information, see Creating a new job.

The new Schedule link can be used to schedule email batches. Batches are sent using a UNICOM Intelligence .mrs script that can be scheduled via Windows Scheduler. Both the Email Scheduling Wizard and the .mrs script, used to send the emails, are configurable. For more information, see Scheduling and running an email job. See Customizing the email scheduler for information on customizing the email scheduler.

The Status column has been updated to indicate when a schedule is active. A Progress column, that shows the current number of emails sent, was added to the Email Jobs list. For more information, see Status column.

The system updates the EmailStatus and EmailCount sample fields (if they are available). These fields can be used to track and manage emails.

The Windows Scheduler can be used for scheduling Email activity jobs. For more information, see Configuring the Windows Scheduler for Email.

A set of SQL tables have been added for the purpose of scheduling and tracking email batches. The email object model, that is used in the batch sending script, is available for other scripting purposes (if required). For more information, see SQL scheduling tables.

Controls the scheduling and sending of email messages via the Interviewer Server Email activity. For more information, see Email object model.

The Ordering page now provides options for defining the queue record order, adding new queue order rules, and deleting queue order rules. For more information, see Ordering settings.

▪Any new UNICOM Intelligence Interviewer synchronization data that is collected is now available to appropriately authorized users via the Remote Administration activity. This enables field managers and first-line support personnel to monitor when the interviewers are synchronizing, and determine which records are being synchronized. For more information, see UNICOM Intelligence Interviewer - Remote Admin.

▪The Remote Administration activity and underlying SQL tables have been updated to provide more information about the synchronization process. For more information, see ‘UNICOM Intelligence Interviewer synchronization tables’ in the UNICOM Intelligence Developer Documentation Library.

The new Restart from Active feature provides the capability of restarting from the ACTIVE queue for Web surveys that employ sample management. Enabling this feature requires several changes:

▪Use DPM Explorer to create a site-wide DPM property called TrackWebSessions under Site > Properties and set its value to 1.

▪Update your sample management script by setting the RESTART_FROM_ACTIVE value to True.

These changes allow respondents to restart active interviews. However, if a respondent moves between active browser sessions when entering data, the case data may become inconsistent for a brief period. This feature relies on the transfer of cache files in order to ensure data remains consistent.

The mrIWeb and mrIEngWS cluster monitoring average response time counters have been updated to average over the last interval rather than over the time since started. They are now PERF_AVERAGE_TIMER type counters instead of PERF_COUNTER_RAWCOUNT type counters. The following performance counters were added: