A reminder is a follow-up push notification that Samply sends automatically when it has not detected a survey completion for the original send. Reminders are optional and configured per schedule. They fire at a fixed offset after the original notification — unless the participant completes the survey first, in which case Samply cancels all pending reminders for that send automatically.
How reminders work
When Samply dispatches an original notification, it immediately schedules any configured reminder rows in the queue. Each reminder row is a separate pending queue entry with Reminder: yes. The reminder inherits the same survey URL (including all substituted placeholder values) as the original send — participants who tap the reminder link land in the same survey session.
Reminders are cancelled in two ways:
- Samply receives a completion event for the original send (via redirect or POST request — see below). It immediately cancels all pending reminders that share the same internal send ID.
- You manually delete the schedule or cancel the rows from the queue.
Without a completion event, every send gets a reminder regardless of whether the participant actually completed the survey.
Configuring reminders in the schedule form
Step 9 of the schedule form is the reminder section. Toggle Send reminders to reveal the reminder planner. For each reminder you want to send, fill in:
- Reminder title
- The bold first line of the reminder push notification on the participant device.
- Reminder message
- The notification body — the second line visible in the system tray.
- Sent after
- The delay from the original notification: days + hours + minutes. A reminder set to 0 days, 1 hour, 0 minutes fires one hour after the original send. All three fields default to 0 — set at least one to a non-zero value.
Click Add new reminder to add a second reminder at a different offset. You can chain as many reminders as needed — for example, a first reminder at 1 hour and a second at 4 hours. All reminders are cancelled as soon as a completion event arrives, regardless of which have already fired.
Registering a completion event
Samply cancels pending reminders as soon as it receives a completion event for a send. Your survey tool signals completion by redirecting the participant to Samply's completion endpoint with the message id at the end of the survey. The exact setup for each tool — Qualtrics, SoSci, LimeSurvey, Unipark, REDCap and more — is in the Survey integrations guides. Make sure %MESSAGE_ID% is included in your notification link (see URL placeholders).
Things to watch out for
- Reminders fire if no completion event arrives
- If the redirect or POST never reaches Samply — because the participant abandoned the survey mid-way, because the survey tool was misconfigured, or because the completion URL had a typo — the reminder will fire as scheduled. Test the full flow with a test participant before going live.
- Reminders inherit the original substituted URL
- The survey URL embedded in reminder notifications is the already-substituted URL from the original send — not a fresh substitution. The same message ID, batch number, and timestamps apply. This is intentional: the reminder should reopen the same survey session. If your survey tool creates a new response for each link open, ensure your logic handles this.
- Reminder rows count toward the queue limit
- Each reminder row is a separate pending entry in the queue and counts toward the 50,000-row limit per study. A schedule with 100 participants and 2 reminders per send generates 3 rows per send, not 1.