Qualtrics may be helpful to manage the reminder emails, if you have access to that.  You can schedule reminder emails for those who were invited to take the survey but haven't submitted yet (under Distributions).  For those who only submit partial information, you can use Workflows to add the user to a new contact list (XM Directory) based on a condition (e.g., questions 3 and 4 are empty), then schedule reminder emails for that separate contact list.

Qualtrics can be tricky to set up just right (send lots of test messages to yourself!) but the automated emails have been well worth it, in my experience.

Thanks,
Cyndy

Cyndy Kelchner, PhD
Research Program Administrator
College of Engineering Research Administration
Oregon State University, 116 Covell Hall, Corvallis OR 97331
541-737-6518, xxxxxx@oregonstate.edu  or  xxxxxx@oregonstate.edu
https://engineering.oregonstate.edu/engineering-research-administration

-----Original Message-----
From: xxxxxx@lists.healthresearch.org <xxxxxx@lists.healthresearch.org> On Behalf Of Walker, Katie
Sent: Wednesday, January 4, 2023 9:56 AM
To: xxxxxx@lists.healthresearch.org
Subject: [RESADM-L] Tracking Projects Hourly

[This email originated from outside of OSU. Use caution with links and attachments.]

Hello all! I'm hoping that someone might have had experience with this and be willing to reach out to me off-list so that I can pick their brains a bit.

Like most places, we use percent effort on our grants. We've had contracts here and there that required more precise tracking of billable days or hours, but never a lot and the person who managed that previously always just did it by email. Now that it's on my plate and we're dealing with more of those contracts, especially looking down the road, I would love to switch to something automated that will collect information by person and by project on a monthly basis and do the appropriate follow-up to make sure that the information is submitted in a timely manner.

Some of the obvious solutions are a non-starter for a variety of reasons - most time tracking software is active tracking to the minute, which is way more than I'd ever need or want to inflict on someone, and then on the other end something like a simple survey in Microsoft or Google Forms doesn't work as well if someone wants to submit partial information but needs to be reminded to complete the rest later.

Right now I'm going with pre-scheduled emails in Outlook, but that doesn't do the follow-up if someone is non-responsive and that's the mental load I'd like to eliminate as the number of projects we're handling like this expands.

If anyone has a great solution to this at a department level, please let me know!

Katie Walker | Associate Director, Finance & Administration | Center for Psychiatric Rehabilitation Boston University | College of Health & Rehabilitation Sciences: Sargent College xxxxxx@bu.edu  |  cpr.bu.edu  | 940 Commonwealth Avenue, Boston, MA 02215