Integrating with Decipher (Forsta)

Producing great research involves gathering a mix of both quantitative and qualitative data. Listen offers both of these capabilities, but if you can’t accomplish what you need to in Listen alone then you can combine Listen with Decipher.

Decipher is a research tool geared toward collecting quantitative data via surveys. By integrating Decipher with Listen, a single set of participants can respond to both a Decipher survey and a Listen interview. Luckily, integrating these two platforms is easy for researchers and participants.

How It Works

The flow of the study will look like this:

1. Participants start by filling out part of a Decipher survey.
2. They are then seamlessly redirected to Listen for an AI interview.
3. Finally, they are brought back to Decipher, continuing where they left off.
4. Researchers are then able to analyze both Decipher & Listen data across all responses.

Given this structure, we need to tell Decipher how to redirect to Listen, and then we need to tell Listen how to redirect back to Decipher, all while preserving participant IDs across platforms.

URL parameters play an important role in this process. For more information on URL Parameters, please check out our article on the subject.

Let’s walk through how you can set this up for your own study:

Redirecting from Decipher to Listen

At some point during the Decipher survey, participants need to be redirected to Listen to start their AI interview.

Step 1: Copy Participant Link

Navigate to the “Share” page within your Listen Study. Once there, you can find and copy your Participant Link.

Step 2: Create Redirect in Decipher

Navigate to the Survey Editor in Decipher and follow these instructions from the Decipher documentation to add a Redirect Logic Node.

When creating your Redirect element, make sure you paste your Participant Link from Listen into the URL field.

Add your Participant ID Query Parameter (usually “rid”) & Participant ID Value (usually “$uuid”) to their respective fields. If needed, add any other URL parameters to the Extra Parameters field.

This ensures that when the user returns to Decipher, they can resume the survey at the correct spot. It also means that the Listen & Decipher responses can be matched by participant ID when you’re analyzing your response data.

Step 3 (Optional): Add URL Parameters to Listen

Adding URL parameters manually means they will show up as their own column on the “Responses” page, which makes it easier to see which participants made it to the Listen interview.

Even if you don’t add them, all URL parameters will be captured by Listen and included in the response data, just not as their own columns.

Navigate to the “Create” page in Listen, and, switch to the “Config” tab.

Add a URL parameter by clicking “Add another URL parameter” and entering the name of the parameter. Add each of the parameters you created in Decipher.

Redirecting back to Decipher

Once participants complete their Listen interview, they can be redirected back to finish their Decipher survey.

Step 1: Activate Redirect on Complete

Navigate to the “Questions” tab on the “Create” page within your Listen study. Below your Questions, in the “Interview End” section, activate the “Redirect on Complete” switch.

Step 2: Add Decipher Link

In the Redirect URL field, paste your Decipher survey link.

Step 3: Keep URL Parameters

If the “Keep existing URL parameters” switch is activated, you don’t need to include any URL parameters in the Redirect URL you just pasted.

Listen will automatically ingest the URL parameters from the original redirect from Decipher (including “rid” and any extra parameters you added) and send those back as part of the Redirect URL.

The Redirect URL will still work if you include URL parameters with it. Any new parameters you add to the URL will still be included, and any duplicates will be removed.

Validate

Try It Live

You’re all set up! In order to validate that the integration is working, you can go through the Decipher survey yourself, including being redirected to Listen and back.

You can then hide your test data via the “Responses” page in Listen to prevent mixing up test data with live data. The Analysis page will update once you get real responses.

You should also remove your test data from the Decipher survey responses.

Next Steps

Now you’re ready to integrate with Decipher! For more detailed assistance, please reach out to our support team via [e-mail].