Notifications on study update

Support
1

Hello, is there a way to not get notifications when something in the study is updated? Some people, I think mostly iPhone users, get a notification whenever I change something in the study saying “the study has been updated”. Is there a way to turn that off in Avicenna or do they have to do it in their phone settings? I have an Android and I am not getting those. I also haven’t found an info about it on Avicenna research.

Best,
Veronika

2

Hi @v.pavlovova

When you change something, the system tries to update that across all active participants right away. This can happen behind the scenes in Android, so participants will only see a quick “Study is being updated” notification, but in iOS, updating the study would require participant to open the app and wait for the update to finish. That’s why they do get this notification in iOS.

You may ask, can we just not show this? Then how the changes you make should be propagated to participants? If we don’t send it, your study configuration on the researcher dashboard will start to diverge from what participants have on their phone.

I understand the inconvenience of this message for participants, but also note in your study you should do your best to finish your study design before starting the enrollment. changes to the study while having active participants is generally not considered a good practice.

Hope this explains the reasoning behind our current design.

Thanks,
Mohammad

3

Hello,

Thanks for the explanation. I understand your point and I agree. Of course I strive to have it completely finished with no mistakes whatsoever before the start of enrolment, but sometimes a mistake can happen. That’s why I was just wondering whether this is something that can be avoided. I understand now, thank you.

Kind regards,
Veronika

4

Your point is very true. Changes during the study is inevitable. We are working on a feature to simplify this flow.

One option is to have a duplicate study. Make all changes there (e.g. changes to your survey flow). Test it yourself internally. And when you are happy with the changes, copy that to the original study.

This limits the change notifications sent to participants to minimum, while making sure they only get the final, fully-tested change.

Hope this helps,
Mohammad

5

That’s a very good point, thank you very much!

Thanks for your help,
Veronika