Guide survey submission notifications

When a participant submits a survey, you may want your admin team to know right away. Centercode gives you two ways to trigger that notification, and both rely on the same underlying tool: a Macro that sends an email to your chosen recipients. The difference is in how and when that macro fires.

This guide covers:

Creating the Macro

Whichever method you use, you'll need a macro set up to send email to your admin team. Create this first.

Navigate to the Users screen at the appropriate level for your survey:

Community-level survey: Click the Community menu > Community Management > Users.
Project-level survey: Click Management > Users > Project Users.

From the Users screen:

1. Click User Resources.

2. Click Create a macro.

3. Enter a name for this macro action.

4. Select Send email, then select Email additional users.

5. Add the email addresses of the admins you want notified.

6. Compose the email template your admins will receive.

7. Click Submit to save the macro.

💡 Ted Tip: Include dynamic tags in your email template to pull in the participant's name or other submission details. This gives admins immediate context without having to look anything up.

Method 1: Run Macro on Submit

The simplest approach. When this setting is enabled on a survey, the macro fires automatically every time a participant submits it. No additional automation setup is needed.

To configure this:

1. Navigate to the survey you want to configure.

2. Open the survey's Basic Settings.

3. Scroll to the Customize section and check the Run macro on submit checkbox.

4. Select the Macro you created above from the drop-down that appears.

5. Save your settings.

From this point on, every submission of that survey triggers the macro and sends the notification email.

💡 Ted Tip: This method is tied directly to the survey, so it only applies to that specific survey. If you want the same notification behavior on multiple surveys, you'll need to configure the setting on each one individually.

Method 2: Conditional Notice Macro

This method uses the Notice chain to monitor participant status and trigger the macro when the completion condition is met. It's a good fit when you want the notification logic to live in your Notice management rather than in individual survey settings.

To configure this, you'll update the macro you created earlier with a conditional filter:

1. Navigate to Management > Notices

2. Click Create a notice macro

3. Enter a notice macro name (and optional description)

4. Change the Macro Type to Conditional.

5. Under Filter, add a condition: Survey - Complete = Yes, targeting the relevant survey.

6. Under the "True macro" (the macro that will execute if a user matches your filter) select the macro you created above

7. Confirm the Team access is set to your participant team.

8. Save the notice macro.

When the Notice chain processes, it checks each participant against the filter. Any participant on the designated team who has completed the survey triggers the macro, sending the notification email to your admin team.

💡 Ted Tip: Notice Macros run as part of the Notice chain, which processes on participant login. Keep in mind that the notification may not fire at the exact moment of submission. It fires when the participant next triggers the Notice chain evaluation, which is typically on their next login.

Notes

Both methods use the same macro. You don't need to create separate macros for each approach.
If you use the conditional Notice Macro method, make sure the macro is positioned correctly within your Notice chain. Macros execute in the order they appear in Notice Management. (ie the notice macro would need to be AFTER/UNDER the survey completion it is checking for)