Create a survey to schedule study participants

Using Outlook to schedule and coordinate study activities with participants can be difficult when it involves protected health information (PHI) and personally identifiable information (PII). Often, email calendars are shared, and any PHI or PII, including participant names, ending up in a scheduled event would be viewable by anyone with access to that calendar.

Here, we aim to address that by utilizing the ID assignment in REDCap and the self-scheduling features in MS Bookings to create a workflow that allows study participants to perform intake surveys and schedule themselves for study events (or accept an already scheduled time) with a research team using Booking's scheduling, without ever having PHI or PII end up viewable in a calendar system outside the research team. This allows researchers to keep all the functionality of their Outlook calendars, as well as that of MS Bookings and if desired, REDCap surveys, without worrying about disclosing PHI or PII.

Prerequisites

1. Secure your own environment.
2. REDCap account.
3. Create a Microsoft Bookings account and a new calendar by following this KB Document.
4. Read through the complete instructions once and grok if this recipe has enough information, or if you would need to follow the detailed recipe.

Directions

Setting Up Microsoft Bookings

1. Navigate to MS Bookings and open the calendar you wish to use for the study, or create a new Bookings Calendar by following the instructions in the link under Prerequisites
2. In the Bookings Page, select the drop down menu for Customer data usage consent and check the box for the consent toggle and message
   1. Add text for an attestation that the participant will not include their given name but their ID
3. Click on "Services" on the left side, and select the pencil icon when hovering over your service to edit it
   
   1. Under services in "Custom fields" uncheck all the entries under Customer information until nothing is left checked 

Setting Up Your REDCap Survey to Utilize Your Bookings Calendar

1. Log in to REDCap, and access your project or create a new one
2. Create your initial instrument under Data Collection Instruments, if you have not already created one, and enable the instrument
3. In Survey Settings, select "Multiple pages (display one section per page)"
   1. Scroll down to Survey Termination Options and select "redirect to a URL" then paste in the field your MS Bookings link
4. Add fields as needed to your survey, or create at least a few as placeholders for Step 5 and 6
5. Add a new field at the very end of the survey, with the Field Type: "Checkboxes"
   1. Add a single blank checkbox, and make the field a Required field 
   2. Write an attestation that says the participant shall use their Participant ID for the field and save to complete the field before moving on
   3. Before the checkbox field that was just added, add another field with the Field Type: "Begin New Section"
6. Add a new field at the very end of the survey, with the Field Type: "Descriptive Text"
   1. Add the text after this colon: [record-name]
   2. Include a hyperlink to your MS Bookings page and save to complete the field before moving on
   3. Before the Descriptive Text field that was just added, add another Field Type: "Begin New Section"
7. Test your survey: select Survey Distribution Tools and click on "Open public survey"
   1. Verify that there is a page dedicated to the attestation, and that the participant cannot move on without checking the box
   2. Verify the last page displays an incrementing ID, and provides a working link to your MS Bookings Calendar page 
8. (Optional) Enable survey invitations with the Participant ID to be sent to the participants upon completion by following this short tutorial
   1. Navigate to Survey Termination Options and enable confirmation emails
   2. Enter something akin to this text in the field: If you have forgotten your Participant ID, it is: [participant_id]
   3. Enter this text in addition to the previous line: If after completing the survey, you did not finish scheduling your appointment with Microsoft Bookings:
      1. paste your MS Bookings link into the field

Other Considerations

• The URL for the booking page stays the same, so if the participant keeps this URL they can return to the same page to recall their booking information
• Using Bookings for an intake survey will provide the intake results on the calendar (hence the use of REDCap)
  • REDCap is not necessary, but participants will have to still use an ID to schedule in Bookings to limit PII
• It is also not required for participants to schedule their own time, the researchers can dictate when the event is; explore the options within Bookings.

Additional Resources

• Email securemyresearch@iu.edu if you feel you need more guidance with the recipe or with your research project and limiting exposure of PII/PHI.