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Duplicating Question Group does not update @'s

C
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I have built out a pretty extensive set of questions, numerous @’s to recall responses, some logic, and various jump to’s in a Question Group.  I have now duplicated that group (I need to duplicate this 20 times). 

On my first test run, I noticed that the @’s in the second Question Group were still referencing responses in the first Question Group.  

I assumed that Typeform would intelligently update these within the Question Group, for every duplication.

Is this not the case, or did I do something incorrectly?

Unfortunately, if this isn't the case, I’m going to have to correct all of these within every (20) Question Group, with approx 40 questions in every group, and nearly every question uses an @ from the previous question to tie the entire form together coherently.  

I’m really hoping I did something wrong in the duplication :-)

Thanks!

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Best answer by john.desborough 6 May 2021, 22:49

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Mariana
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Hi @C_W_. Happy Thursday! =)

 

If I understood it properly, you'd like to duplicate the question and recall the information from the previous question. Am I correct? If so, that wouldn't be possible. Once you duplicate the question, the recall information will be the same as the original one. Meaning, all the settings of your form will be duplicated =)

 

Hope this helps! 

Smile – sunshine is good for your teeth.
C
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Ok, so I assume that will apply to Question Groups as well?

Duplicating a Question Group, seems to cause all of the questions in that group that are duplicated to reference the recall @ of the original Question Group (which, frankly is not very helpful hahaha). 

It sounds like this is just the way that it is… so I have a long long long night ahead of me hahaha :-)

Thanks,

Chisholm

 

john.desborough
Userlevel 7
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@C_W_ - as a fellow user, i feel your pain.. been there and done that.. 

while it would be really nice to be able to have the ‘auto-update’ feature as you described, after i railed at the machine and consumed too many coffees (can there be such a thing?) and did all the delete/replace variable/answer clicking, i sat back and looked at the situation from the perspective that while it is easy to duplicate a static set (the way it is) given that we can drag and drop questions and move them around - constantly changing the potential auto-updated details - It sort of made sense when you look at this platform as primarily a way to have better interactions with people/customers. It’s not a data entry system nor a full blown Augmented Intelligence platform - though i have wished many times it was. 

good luck on your project and i will keep the coffee pot on just in case lol. 

cheers

 

If your third coffee of the day is not helping you with your Typeform, maybe we can help you find your answers...
C
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@john.desborough  I agree that in many parts of the platform, it wouldnt make sense to automatically update things (especially logic, since you really need to review that yourself and make sure it’s doing exactly what you want to do), I still feel like automatically updating the recall @’s in the Question groups would make a lot of sense, as that’s sort of the point of duplicating a group (in my brain at least)

If I have the following:

Question Group 4
     4a  What is the color of a car that you’ve owned?

                 Response:   RED

     4b    Awesome!  I love @4a cars!

 

Question Group 5 (duplicated from 4)
     5a  What is the color of a car that you’ve owned?

                 Response:   BLUE

     5b    Awesome!  I love @4a cars!

 

You see that this is not the behavior that I would have expected. 

In this simple example, it seems easy enough to change, but I have (or was anticipating) 20 question groups, and each question group has 19 steps, so it’s a lot of going back and doing it over again, when I think typeform could rather easily just “adjust” @4a to @5a when I duplicate a Question Group.  

 

Two other suggestions (One I’m sure many have asked for that is almost a re-design of the system):

Being able to ask for multiple responses on the same screen would really cut down on the steps required.  i.e.  Address,  City, State, ZIP    or  First Name, Last Name.     The limitation of 1 question at at time really creates a lot of steps.

The suggestion more likely to be implemented, is that when using a recall, showing the ID/step number (not sure what they are called) on the screen, would be very very helpful in my situation.  Currently we get the little light blue box with the darker outline with the Question.   Like:

“What is the color of a car that you’ve owned”

What would be helpful is:

“5a What is the color of a car that you’ve owned”

That way I can see where the @recall is pulling the information from. 

I think this is why I didnt even notice that the Question Groups were not duplicating the way i described above, because when reviewing the steps in order, I didnt even notice that the @recall was pulling from the wrong Question Group.   They looked 100% correct and I had no indication that it wasnt going to work that way when I published it. 

 

You’re probably right, I may be trying to do too much with typeform as a system for data collection/data entry.  If you know of a system, I would welcome suggestions. 

I do really love typeform though and I’m already thinking of dozens of other ways to use it, but I guess I’m hitting a few little snags with the complexity of what I’m trying to do :-)

I’m 4 cups in already this morning, but will gladly take more! hahaha

 

Thanks!!

             

C
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As I’m sitting here doing this… I have another suggestion.

It would be stellar when using a recall, to be able to just type  @5g or @17i or @20s rather than scrolling through a list of dozens (or hundreds in my case) of options.    :-)

C
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My final summary screen makes me want to cry now…. LOL

 

 

john.desborough
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@C_W_ -going back up to your long response 3 above: I concur, it would have been awesome to have that in the tool.. or even the understanding from the documentation that it won’t update the @recalls… BUT at least we would know going into it.. 

my first nightmare on this track was an assessment with 13 question groups and between 6 and 15 questions in the groups. planning ahead, i created the longest list first so that i could duplicate and then just lop of the list for a group as required. But once i realized it had not done the updating of the @recalls, it was simply just a matter of swearing for a moment, pour two fingers of scotch in the glass and pushing the coffee to the side and just grinding through it. I was hoping that it would take a second two fingers of scotch but sadly… 

I have a full-on deep dive assessment that has over 400 question groups and close to 4,100 questions in the survey - i have gone the route of breaking it down into 10 surveys of 40 q groups each. this is a month’s long project that i am turning from a paperbased interview collection to an online typeform series. Tell me how much i would like the automation of the @recalls AND for logic to be available on MATRIX questions (i could reduce 3 of the 40 q=group survey above (average 400 questions insid), into a 40 question matrix typeform.. bob’s your uncle. 

keep the faith (in typeform) … i am banking on it myself lol!!

If your third coffee of the day is not helping you with your Typeform, maybe we can help you find your answers...
C
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If we could use the question ID, I could easily “replace all” on the number and copy and paste this:

 

Perfect. You're all done with this location. Let's review:
The @5a location for @1 is at @5b.

The phone number there is @5c and the fax number is @5d .

@5a has approximately @5e desktop computers and @5f laptops.

Our primary contact person for this location is @5g and they can be reached at @5h or via email to @5i .

When people at @5a need a little extra computer help, they ask @5k . @5k can be reached via phone at @5l or email at @5m .

More advanced support questions and IT related matters are handled by @5o and you usually reach out to @5p who can be reached at @5r or @5q .

Does everything for this location look correct?

C
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HAHAH @john.desborough  Between the coffee and the scotch, it sounds like we would get along fabulously.   As it’s Friday, I’m holding off on the scotch for a few more hours (hopefully), but I can definitely relate to the swearing.   I went into this (especially seeing the Question Group duplication) thinking this was going to be fast and easy.  Setting up the first Question Group took a few hours, but I didnt think twice about it since I could hit “Duplicate” 19 more times and be done !!   The realization that this wasnt going going to work, definitely had me cussing a bit. 

 

Sounds like you definitely understand my pain…. I’ll quit complaining about the scope of my little project after reading of yours.  I dont envy you! 

john.desborough
Userlevel 7
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@C_W_ - hang in there.. lol.. i have enough scotch for about 53 projects (53 bottles on the shelf and still short a few to catch up to my age - my goal)  and coffee for more than that

good luck over the rest of your project!

 

If your third coffee of the day is not helping you with your Typeform, maybe we can help you find your answers...

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