This is a pretty common question so thanks for asking it!
I think it’s important to point out why the default functionality works the way that it does. By default, when using the single link functionality, respondents will enter their name and email address into a form and will then receive an email that contains their unique link to take the survey. This means that a respondent cannot impersonate another respondent and preserves the privacy of respondents.
If this is not the flow that you would like to see, there are a few options available to you:
- You don’t need to use the single link functionality if you (or the organisation you are working with) can run their own mail merge. The way that you would do that is to export the respondent list and use the unique links contained in the respondent list in order to run a mail merge such that each respondent will receive an email with their own unique link. For reminder emails you would then need to repeat the process but removing everyone with the “Submitted” status from the file.
- Under Edit -> Collect Responses -> Advanced Options you can change the default settings so that instead of email you use another field to verify respondents. For example, enter employee ID as the Identifying Information. Then you will want to include employee ID as the name of an additional attribute in the respondent list. Respondents will then be verified by name and employee id and won’t receive an email. They will go straight to their response on entering that private information. Generally you will want to set Name Autocompletion to Yes in this scenario too.
- It’s possible to also set up the Single Link option so that respondents enter their name and email and then just go straight to their response. To do this, just enter something other than “email” for the Identifying Information but which represents email. For example, enter “your email in lowercase” here and then add a column in the Respondent List called “your email in lowercase” in which you would include all the respondents’ emails in lowercase. With that setup the respondent can enter their name and email and go straight to their response…beware the privacy implications though and the fact that someone could impersonate another respondent.