20240717 - Sending Survey Invitations via email from Guest WashU REDCap Accounts
- Christopher Sorensen
This blog is available as a REDCap User Guide:
Sending Email Invitations from Guest Wash U REDCap Accounts.
Hello Wash U REDCap Community,
We often receive tickets regarding issues with REDCap email invitations sent from collaborators with guest WUSTL Keys not making it to the inbox of survey respondents. In brief, when email providers such as Gmail see an email coming from WashU (i.e., sent from WashU REDCap) that does not have the domain @wustl.edu, the email provider believes this is a Phishing attempt. While this is a good thing for our overall internet security, it causes issues with multi-site REDCap studies. Please Submit a REDCap Ticket if you have questions.
Purpose: Demonstrate how Guest WashU REDCap users can add a secondary and tertiary email address with an @wustl.edu domain to use when sending email invitations from within REDCap. This ensures survey invitations are delivered to the mailbox of a survey respondent when the email invitations are sent from within WashU REDCap.
Primary Issue: Survey invitations scheduled or sent from an email address that are not @wustl.edu will be rejected by many email domains (Gmail, Yahoo, etc.). The rejection behavior is inconsistent across email providers except for Gmail which appears to reject all invitations sent from a non @wustl.edu email address from within WashU REDCap. This issue arises for other instances of REDCap as well.
Full Description: REDCap chooses the primary email address of a user by default when scheduling Automated Survey Invitations and Alerts & Notifications, and when sending invitations from the Participant List or any other survey distribution method. This can cause issues for guest WashU REDCap users when sending or scheduling email invitations. Guest WashU REDCap users receive a guest WUSTL Key and password for access to REDCap (e.g., wg-name) but do not receive an actual WashU email account or access to other WashU applications (unless their sponsor has them approved for additional access). For most guest WashU REDCap users, their primary email account is not a @wustl.edu account. It is generally an email from another institution, organization, etc. See the below “test” account created by WashU REDCap Support to mimic an external user:
Setting the users non-wustl email address as the primary account allows the guest user to verify their REDCap account upon initial login and receive email communications from WashU REDCap Admins. The issue arises when guest users set up invitations from within REDCap and their primary address is selected by default:
If this email is used to deliver the invitation, it will be rejected by Gmail and some other email providers.
Here are two methods to correct this issue:
If unable to deliver to a specific address via REDCap
If an invitation is unable to be delivered to a specific email address, you can send the invitation manually. Do this by copying and pasting information from the survey invitation in REDCap into an email for the survey respondent.
To find information for an Automated Survey Invitation, follow this FAQ: How do I check if my Automated Survey Invitation was sent or scheduled to send?
To find information for an Alert & Notification, follow this FAQ: How do I check if my Alerts & Notification was sent or scheduled to send?
Manual email deliveries will not be logged in REDCap so it is recommended that you document manual deliveries in a study master log or similar document.