Mosio is a messaging service specifically tailored for REDCap users, allowing for automated survey invites, alerts, and survey invitations via SMS/text messaging. Mosio is available for project teams through a monthly subscription model. For more information about the subscription plans and how to get an account, please read Getting a Mosio Account.
Mosio offers the "Storylines" feature, which allows you to define a timeline of specific SMS messages that you would like to send a participant who is enrolled within a storyline, automating participant communication within the Mosio application itself. Multiple storylines can be configured within a single project. The Storylines feature is made available to all Mosio accounts with at least a Basic plan.
Jump to:
- Creating a New Storyline
- Creating Messages in a Storyline
- Reviewing/Updating your Storyline Schedule
Creating a New Storyline
To begin creating a storyline, head to your Mosio project dashboard. From there, click on the "+ Create new storyline" text.
In the pop-up window, you will want to define the name of your storyline. After you have named your storyline, click the blue "CREATE STORYLINE" button.
Creating Messages in a Storyline
Once you have named your storyline, you will be brought to the storyline configuration page.
Step 1, 2, and 3 will be used to configure each day within your storyline. Each date will be relative to the start date for a participant. First, we'll configure a text the participant will receive once enrolled in the storyline.
For our "Set Day number in storyline", we will enter a value of 0 to ensure the participant receives an SMS message after they have been enrolled. Since we want the participant to be notified immediately, we will schedule the message to send at 1:00AM, with the assumption being that the participant has been enrolled AFTER 1:00AM on their start date.
In Step 2, we'll define our message. For the "Type" of message, we are able to either select "Alert" or "Survey".
Designing an "Alert" message for your Storyline
First, we will look at the "Alert" option. This is used to convey a basic message to a participant. Creating an alert just requires that you enter the text in the provided note box. Underneath the notebox, you can see an overall character count of your message, along with a total number of segments that your SMS message will send as.
Within the body of the alert, you may also pipe in data that may exist elsewhere in the project. In this project, "coord_name" is a custom project variable (learn more about custom project variables by clicking on this text) that has been designated to capture the coordinator assigned to working with this participant. If you would like to include this information, you would include the variable name closed in two percentage symbols. Here is what this would look like in action -
Mosio also offers you the option to attach an image to your SMS message. Images must be added on the the "Image Manager", accessible by clicking the "Tools" dropdown on the navigation bar on top of the page.
Note: Clicking the image manager dropdown option will take you off the current page, and your storyline message will be lost unless the "Save" button is pressed.
The dropdown provided will list any images you have uploaded to your project via the Image Manager.
To add an image to attach to your SMS message, select the image for the provided dropdown, and click the blue "Add Image" button.
After pressing the "Add Image" button, the image will appear on screen.
To add an additional image, repeat this process. To remove an image, click on the "X" to the right of the image file's name.
Once you're done customizing the alert, you will click the green "Save" button for Step 3.
Designing a "Survey" message for your Storyline
This section will not comprehensively cover survey functionality as this is a complex feature. You can visit Mosio's knowledge base for additional details: https://mosio.zendesk.com/hc/en-us. We will, however, cover how a simple survey can be integrated to a storyline.
Selecting the "Survey" option will generate a "Select survey" option.
The "Select survey" dropdown will contain all existing surveys on the current Mosio project.
In our case, we only currently had one survey configured. To create a new survey for our storyline, click on the "Surveys" dropdown on the navigation bar towards the top of the page.
From the "Surveys" dropdown menu, click on the "Create Survey..." option.
This will generate a pop-up window where there is a prompt to define a "Survey Name". Enter something in this field (ideally something clearly associated with your Storyline, or the survey's purpose), and then click the blue "Create Survey" button.
After the page reloads, you will have options to customize your new survey. A survey in Mosio can be as simple as a "Yes/No" question that triggers an action, or you can add certain types of validation to participant responses. New surveys start with an initial question already created.
To update this question, we can click the yellow "Edit" button.
This will provide a number of new configuration options.
From here, we can define a question that the user may respond to, along with "question actions" which will occur based on a participant's response. Once you have made all desired modifications to a question, you will click the "Update" button.
If you would like to add additional questions to this survey, you can click the "+ Add Question" button.
You will also be able to designate an error message if participants provide an invalid answer, and define system actions (such as sending additional messages, or closing the survey) using the "+ Add Unresponsive" button.
Once your survey is saved and completed, you may return to configuring your storyline, and will now have the new option from the "Select survey" dropdown.
Clicking "Save" will update your "Storyline Schedule"
Reviewing/Updating your Storyline Schedule
After adding an alert or survey to your storyline and pressing the "Save" button, you will be able to see a summary of your storyline. You may also review your storyline by opening your Mosio project dashboard and clicking on the name of the storyline as it appears in the storyline tile.
You will initially be redirected to the enrollment dashboard. From here, click on the "Storyline Configuration" button towards the top-left of the page.
This will bring you to the initial configuration user interface. You may add additional alerts and surveys to your storyline from here. You may also scroll down to the bottom of the page to the storyline schedule section, where you will see all of the alerts and surveys assigned to the storyline, along with the message and designated send day/time.
To remove an existing alert or survey, click the "Delete" text found inside square brackets.
You may also edit the text, time, or day of the alert by clicking on the value/text of each component. See the following screenshots to see how fields will appear when being edited.
Edit day:
Edit time:
Edit message:
To edit the content of the survey, click on the "Surveys" dropdown at the top of the page and click on the name of the survey.
Day and time can be edited from the storyline overview, and you will be able switch surveys by clicking on the name of the survey.
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Next Up
Begin enrolling participants into your storylines in Enrolling a Participant in a Storyline.