How to Send a Notification with a Manually Released Activity

[leila]

The Situation

You are running a study and need to send a one-time message to all participants (e.g., over 600 people). The standard one-off send notification tool is designed for smaller, targeted groups and does not have a “select all” option, making it impractical for large cohorts.

To send a message to everyone at once, you can manually release the survey. However, when you try to publish the survey, you get an error because you’ve linked a “Session Released” notification template, but the activity has no schedulable triggering logic.

The system requires a schedulable trigger (like a Time TL) to validate a “Session Released” notification, even if you only plan to release the activity manually.

What to Do?

Here is a simple workaround. You will add a “dummy” Time Triggering Logic that won’t ever trigger a session on its own. This will allow you to publish the activity with the notification linked.

1. Create Your Survey.

   • Create a new survey and add an Information question containing the message you want to send.
   • In the Triggering Logics tab, remove any existing triggers.
   

2. Add a “Dummy” Time Triggering Logic.

   • In the Triggering Logics tab, add a new Time Triggering Logic. The schedule settings do not matter, as this trigger will be disabled.
   • In its Criteria field, enter 1 != 1. This creates a condition that is logically impossible (False). It tells the system the activity has a trigger (satisfying the validation rule), but ensures the trigger will never automatically schedule a session.
   

3. Link Your Notification Template.

   • Go to the Notification Templates tab.
   • Ensure your “Session Released” notification template is created and linked to the activity.
   

4. Publish the Activity.

   • Go to the Preview & Publish page. The error messages should now be gone.
   • Click Publish.

5. Release the Activity to Participants.

   • After publishing, go to the Activity Sessions page.
   • Click Create New Sessions and select Release Activity.
   • In the dialog, choose your activity. In the participants dropdown, you can now easily select “All Participants” to send the notification to everyone at once.
   

Pro Tip

You can reuse this activity for future announcements. Instead of creating a new survey from scratch each time, simply edit the content of the Information question, publish the changes, and release the activity again to your participants.