Identifying respondents
By default, responses are anonymous. If you need to follow up or match answers to your own customer records, Diaform gives you four ways to attach an identity to a conversation.
| Method | Best when |
|---|---|
| Ask in the interview | You don't know who will answer |
| Invite links | You know exactly who you're asking |
| Embed identifier | Respondents are signed in to your app |
| AI extraction | Always on, as a fallback |
Ask for an email in the interview#
Add a question such as "What email should we use if we need to follow up?" In the question's Advanced options, turn on Answer is mandatory if you can't use a response without it.
The AI checks that the email address looks valid and asks the respondent to confirm one that doesn't. If a respondent declines to answer a mandatory question three times, the AI ends the conversation as Cancelled. Make a question mandatory only when you need the answer. See Advanced question options.
Send invite links#
Pro An invite link is a personal link with an identity attached. Invite links are available on Pro, Business and Enterprise plans.
Create the link
In Share, open Invite and click Create new invite. Pick an Identity type (Email, Name, Identifier, UUID, User ID or Account ID), enter the value, and click Add identity for more. Each type can be used once.
Send it
Click Create link. The link is copied for you. You can create links before you publish, but they only open once the project is live.
Email the invitation#
When an invite has an Email identity and the project is published, the dialog shows an Email the invitation switch, which starts on. Leave it on and Diaform emails the link to that address as soon as you click Create and send. Turn it off to create the link without emailing anyone. You can still send the email later from the invite's menu.
- The email is written in the project's language, names your product, says the conversation is with an AI interviewer and how long it takes, and has one button to start.
- Replies go to the person who created the invite.
- If the respondent hasn't finished after 3 days, Diaform sends one reminder. It sends no further reminders.
- Every email has an unsubscribe link. Someone who unsubscribes gets no more invitations from your organization.
- How many invitation emails you can send each month depends on your plan. See Invitation limits below. Nothing is sent when the project is unpublished or your organization has no usage left.
The invite list names each invite by its email address, or by its name or an ID when it has no email, and shows Invitation emailed or Reminder sent next to the date. Click a row to see all of its identities and what happened to it. The three dots at the end of a row open a menu with Copy invite link, Send email (for an invite with an email address that has not been emailed yet) and Delete invitation. Diaform asks you to confirm before it sends or deletes. A deleted invitation's link stops working, and a response that was already given is kept.
Each link belongs to one conversation. The respondent can leave and come back until the interview ends. Then the link closes, and the list shows the invite as Completed.
To accept only invited people, click Respondent access, choose Invite-only links and click Save. This turns off your public link and embeds. In Public link mode, invite links and the public link work side by side.
Invite links are not a login
Anyone who has an invite link can open it. Diaform doesn't verify the person behind it. If you need that, open the link from inside your own signed-in product.
You can also create invite links from your own systems with the Respondent invites API.
Import a contact list#
To invite many people at once, click the arrow next to Create new invite, choose Bulk import and pick a CSV file with one person per row, up to 2,000 people. Match each column to an identity type, or leave it out. Turn on Email the invitations to send every person their link, or leave it off and click Download links to get a file with all the links and send them yourself. Skip people already invited leaves out email addresses that already have an invitation for this project.
- One import runs at a time in an organization. If a teammate is importing, or you have an import open in another tab, wait until it has finished.
- Emails from an import go out over the next few minutes.
Invitation limits#
| Plan | Invitation emails per month | People imported per month |
|---|---|---|
| Pro | 1,500 | 1,500 |
| Business | 5,000 | 5,000 |
| Enterprise | 15,000 | 15,000 |
- Both numbers reset with your monthly AI messages.
- Reminders don't count as invitation emails.
- People left out of an import because they were already invited don't count.
- A file can hold up to 2,000 people. Split a longer list into several files.
- When the invitation emails are used up, the people you invite still get a link, but no email. When the imports are used up, the rest of a file is left out.
- Invite links you create one at a time, by hand or through the API, don't count toward the imports.
Pass an identifier from your embed#
If you embed the interview in your app, pass your user ID or email with data-identifier on the chat bubble, or &identifier= on the inline iframe URL. See Publishing and sharing.
AI extraction#
When a conversation ends, Diaform looks for details respondents gave about themselves, such as their email, name, phone or company, and saves them as identities. It ignores product or company names that the respondent mentions only as feedback topics.
Every identity, regardless of how it was collected, appears on the response, in CSV exports and in webhook data.