Limiting typeform responses from the same person

  • 29 November 2022
  • 6 replies
  • 683 views

Someone asked about this a year ago and there still isn’t a fix - can Typeform offer a button that limits a respondent from submitting to the same survey multiple times? There is currently no easy solution to this issue and it seems like a big one. I know Google surveys offers this. Any tips on a super easy solution? Many of the solutions I read in previous threads require more work on the customer side when this should be handled on the backend by Typeform. Thanks! 


6 replies

Userlevel 7
Badge +6

@Lisastory - i don’t mean to sound contrarian here, but why does it need to be on Typeform’s side? 

Yes it would be great if they had a switch that said “so you want multiple entries by a person?ip address? email? or not?” so that we could toggle it on or off. 

But for all the stuff that i have created for my own forms and for my clients, in many cases, we require multiple entries to the same form - ie a maturity matrix self-assessment that is taken every 3 months in the same quiz. The business case there requires multiple entries

Where there are clients who want restrictions on completing the form, we look at the various possible ways that people are arriving at the form to determine how to restrict access or restrict multiple access - one method is to have an ‘entry form’ that asks for email and then using API/webhook check to see if the email entered is already in an external data source - if it is, route the user to a form that says ‘sorry’ or if allowed to proceed, takes them to the next typeform in the series. 

are your users a ‘member’ of a community or course on your site that they need to log into and then take a quiz? wouldn’t it be better to have the access TO the typeform restricted at the source?

 

These are all use cases that exist and Typeform’s current model, from what i can see, is to capture the data when the user hits ‘submit’ - until then it can’t tell anything as it is NOT receiving the data about the user to do any validation 

 

I have this ‘philosophical argument’ with my clients all the time - we are operating in an ecosystem of point functionality apps (just look at your phone) and we’ve got to figure out the appropriate tools to use at each point in the business process we are trying to instantiate. Typeform is never going to be everything to everybody so i think it is up to use as users/creators to figure out if and how to use Typeform as it is, in our own ecosystems. 

 

I am in agreement with you that this would be a great feature if it shows up in Typeform, don’t get me wrong… i just don’t think it is incumbent on Typeform to address all the possible technical wants that we have (and i have a long list for Typeform lol) 

 

des

Thank you for your detailed response, @john.desborough. If you have any suggestions for a simple workaround I’m all ears. By the way, it feels uncomfortable that you’re a Typeform “Certified Partner and Champion” questioning the validity of a customer’s request. The request I have is a basic function that I as a paying customer (not partner or champion) think Typeform should offer.  I’d certainly appreciate it if Typeform would offer a simple button that eliminates multiple responses to the same form. Thanks!

Hi there, this question was posed 11 months ago, is there a fix to the issue? I want to prevent the same individual from responding to the typeform more than once. I am asking the user to enter both their name and email address. Can the typeform logic look up for the email address against the currently added email in the database and prevent the user from proceeding as said in the previous post.

Userlevel 7
Badge +5

Hi @SocialCommittee thanks for checking in here.

At the moment it’s not possible to prevent a user from responding more than once. It’s definitely something we can raise with the product team again so I will pass the feedback along 😊

Userlevel 7
Badge +6

@SocialCommittee - just a thought: while Typeform (natively) can’t stop someone from filling in the form multiple times, you could connect the form to a google sheet and have all the submissions recorded there as well as in typeform. 

once the data is in the google sheet you can set up your analytics to only take into consideration the first entry by a given email address and to delete all subsequent entries into the table. 

 

just a thought

 

des

I also, would very much appreciate this option. My survey is about a community choosing a day/time for a meetup. If one person can fill the survey out multiple times then the survey can’t capture what is best for the community. Appreciate the work arounds listed but would a built-in option seems both doable and very useful in many scenarios. Thanks!

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