Automation Example: Score a Quiz or Exam

Details

Looking to build an automation that automatically 'scores' a quiz or exam based on the contact's answers? In this guide, we'll show you how to build the quiz using a form, build an automation that scores the results, plus create an email that sends to the contact with their result.

The scoring component will only work with field-types that have pre-set answers; such as dropdowns, radio buttons & checkboxes. It will not really work with free-form text boxes or most other field types, given they cannot easily be analysed for exact-match answers.

Ideas & Inspiration - Our Content Examples

Here are some screenshots of the form and email we'll be building for this use-case example. Of course, you can adjust the wording and design to suit your needs. To re-cap, we'll be building a five-question quiz, an email with the results and an Advanced Automation sequence to power it all.

Form design example:

Below is our quiz form, which you either can send to the contact via email or simply by sharing a public link to the form. There's two ways to create this form - as a 'Subscribe' form, or an 'Update Profile' form. The way you use this quiz will determine which form type you'll need to use when creating the form.

Understanding the different form types. 

In our example, we'll be using an Update Profile form type (shown below) - as we're going to be sending the quiz to existing contacts. We've enabled the checkbox to skip the login screen in the form settings, so that contacts are taken directly to the form without having to log in unnecessarily first.

Email design example:

This is our email which sends to the contact whenever they submit a quiz-result. The email contains Conditional Content on the main paragraph / text block to display different information based on whether they pass the quiz or not. In our case, a 'pass' is 4 (or more) out of 5.

Conditional Content is a great way to alter the information being sent (based on contact data) - and it means we only need to make one email that adjusts automatically based on a pass or fail, instead of two (one for pass, one for fail). It also means one less automation step to build!

The email with the 'pass' variation visible:

The same email with the 'fail' variation visible:

How-to Guide

Part 1: Building the Quiz Form

1. Select Lists and Forms from the sidebar.
2. Forms are attached to lists - so locate the list that you wish to create your new quiz form on. In most cases, it will be the same list that you're going to send the quiz email to, and will be the list where quiz results are stored. If you don't yet have any lists, see our guide on creating lists.
3. Double-click on your chosen list, to enter Forms view.
4. Click the + icon to create a new form.
5. Give your form a name (we used: 'Certification Quiz') and select your desired form type from the Form Type dropdown. In our case, since we're sending to existing contacts to quiz them, we'll use the Update Profile form type.
6. You'll now be taken to the login screen for your new form - but let's disable this, so users don't have to login unnecessarily. Open the Advanced Settings panel on the right side of the page.
7. Enable the Do not show login form if contact has clicked through from an email checkbox.
   
8. Next, click on the Update Profile sub-tab near the top of the form (as shown), to ensure we're editing the correct part on the form.
   
9. The form may have a number of existing fields on it, but we won't need these - so be sure to remove them from the form by either clicking on the field and pressing the bin icon, or by clicking the 👁️ icon to the right (on the Design tab, in the Fields panel) to 'hide' a field from the form. Remember: Because we're emailing the form to our contacts, the system already knows who they are - so you won't need to include any fields for gathering data that you already know (such as email, name, etc); all the form actually needs is the quiz questions.
10. Speaking of which - let's add the various quiz questions as fields. Click Add New Fields to the right.
11. Select your desired field type for the first quiz question. As mentioned earlier, fields with pre-determined answers (like radio button, drop-down and checkbox fields) work best. In our example, we've used the radio button field type for all of our answers.
12. Click Add.
13. Next, enter a Field Name. In our case, we've elected to use a naming convention of 'Exam Q1', 'Exam Q2' and so on. While you could type your entire question into the field name, it can quickly become unwieldy when trying to view or download the data later on - but it's up to you.
14. In the Radio Values section, enter the various answers for this question. Only one will be correct, the others will be incorrect answers.
15. In the Field Display Name, enter the actual quiz question that the contact will see on the quiz form.
    
16. When done, click Save. Your question and its answers should now appear on the form as a new field (as shown).
    
17. Repeat steps 10 - 16 until you've created all of your exam questions. For reference, here's our form so far...
    
18. Next, let's make a special extra field for the quiz. It's a bit of a weird one, but hear us out - essentially, we'll use this field to 'reset' the score if the same contact decides to take the exam more than once. If we don't have this special extra field, then a contact's quiz could, in theory, be much higher than the number of questions on your quiz! We're going to use this special extra field as a bit of a 'reset' command. More on this later when we setup the automation in Part 3 - but for now, we'll just add the field. Click Add New Fields again.
19. Make a Radio Button field type.
20. Set the Field Name to 'Confirmation', make the one and only Radio Values something like 'I confirm I am submitting my own answers', and set the Display Name to something like 'Quiz confirmation'. Here's a screenshot from our setup:
    
21. When done, click Save. Optionally, move this field up to the top of your form.
22. Set all of your form fields to mandatory. You can do so by clicking on each field one by one, then setting the Mandatory option (on the right hand side) to Yes.
23. You may also wish to customise the appearance of your form by adding your logo, some introductory text or adjusting the spacing, colours and so on. For reference, here's our form so far:
    
24. One last step - we need to make a field that the automation can save the 'score' into. Click Add New Fields one final time.
25. Make a Number field type.
26. Set the Field Name to 'Exam Score' and make sure the Content Type is set to 'Number (Decimal)'. Here's a screenshot from our field setup:
    
27. When done, click Save. Our system will assume you want the new 'Exam Score' field to appear on our form - but we don't, so be sure to remove it from the form by either clicking on the field and pressing the bin icon, or by clicking the 👁️ icon to the right (on the Design tab, in the Fields panel) to 'hide' the field from the form.
28. With your quiz form complete, click Save at the top right.
29. Close out of the forms section by selecting Dashboard from the sidebar.

Receive an email notification each time someone updates their profile with a quiz submission. 

Nice work on building your quiz form! Next, we'll create the email that gets sent to contacts once they submit their quiz answers.

Part 2: Building the Email

1. Select Messages from the sidebar. Create a new email (or copy an existing one if easier).
2. Let's save time and build just one email to handle both the 'pass' and 'fail' messaging; we'll use our Conditional Content function to achieve this. Start by creating the content you wish to display if the contact doesn't pass their exam. As you can see, we used the Wildcard function to insert the contact's first name and their exam score into the text. We've also added a call to action button labelled 'Retake the quiz' which links to the quiz form so that the can retake the quiz. Here's how the setup of this looks:
   
3. Now we'll create a 'variation' on the main content block for the 'pass' version of the email. To do so, click on the text block, then expand the Conditions panel to the bottom right.
   
4. Click Add Conditions.
5. In our particular example, a pass mark is 4 or 5 (remember, we have 5 question in total and we're going to allow one incorrect answer) - so let's add the condition as follows:
   
6. This means that the condition (or variation) we're about to create will ONLY show if the contact passes (eg. gets a score of 4 or 5). Click OK.
7. Once the condition is added, our system copies whatever was in your component originally - but you can now go in and change it. In our case, we'll replace the text with wording to suit a contact that has passed the test, and turned off the call to action button. Here's what we have from our example:
   
8. Click Save to save your email.
9. If prompted, give your message an appropriate name and enter a subject line (we used: 'Your quiz results are in %%First_Name%%'). Since we're going to use this email message in an automation, you may wish to save the message into a folder called 'Automations' (or similar), so that you and your colleagues know what it's for and don't delete it accidentally.
10. Close out of the messages section by selecting Dashboard from the sidebar.

Great job so far! Note that in this guide, we won't build the email that tells people about the quiz in the first place (since that's super easy to do); we've only built the email that gets sent to contacts automatically after they submit a quiz.

Next, we'll build the automation steps that automatically score the quiz and send the results email.

Part 3: Building the Automation

1. Select Automation from the sidebar.
2. Select the Advanced Automation tab.
3. Click New Workflow.
4. Give your workflow a Name (eg. 'Quiz Scoring Automation').
5. Click Save. We'll begin by creating an automation step that sets the score back to 0 each time someone takes the quiz. This prevents the score from going up and up indefinitely if a contact re-takes the quiz!
6. Click New Step.
7. In the first (This action relates to) section, set the action to be A trigger against the following list. Then select the list you're using for this. It'll be the same list that you used in Part 1 of this guide, where you built your quiz form.
8. In the second (Select a trigger) section, select the trigger as Update Profile.
9. In the two dropdowns underneath this, select the folder and form you're want the automation to 'listen to' for profile updates. Be sure to select your quiz form here. We named our quiz form 'Certification Quiz', so we'll select that here.
   
10. Under the Filter your Contacts area, click Add/Edit. The filtering dialog will appear.
11. Set up the filter as follows:
    
12. Click OK.
13. In the third (Perform the following action(s)) section, turn off all of the checkboxes - as we don't want to send anything as part of this step.
14. Next, in the Change the following value(s) in the contact record area, click Add/Edit. The field adjustment dialog will appear.
15. Set it up as follows:
    
16. Click OK.
17. In the fourth (Configure timing) section, set the timing to Immediately. Our automation step should now look something like this:
    
18. Click Save. You'll now be taken back to the main page for the automation.
19. Now we'll create the scoring step for our first quiz question. Click New Step.
20. In the first (This action relates to) section, set the action to be A trigger against the following list. Then select the list you're using for this. It'll be the same list you used a few moments ago.
21. In the second (Select a trigger) section, select the trigger as Update Profile.
22. In the two dropdowns underneath this, select the same folder and form as you did earlier.
23. Under the Filter your Contacts area, click Add/Edit. The filtering dialog will appear.
24. Set up the filter as follows (your quiz answers will obviously be different to ours, so be sure to select just the correct answer from the list):
    
25. Click OK.
26. In the third (Perform the following action(s)) section, turn off all of the checkboxes - as we don't want to send anything as part of this step.
27. Next, in the Change the following value(s) in the contact record area, click Add/Edit. The field adjustment dialog will appear.
28. Set it up as follows:
    
29. Click OK.
30. In the fourth (Configure timing) section, set the timing to 1 minutes later. Our automation step should now look something like this:
    
31. Click Save. You'll now be taken back to the main page for the automation.
32. Repeat steps 19 to 31 for each of your additional quiz questions - being sure to select your second question (and it's relevant answer), then the third question (and its relevant answer) and so on, each time you get to step 24.
33. Once you've completed the automation step for your final quiz question, we'll create one last step for sending the email with the pass or fail result (the one we made in Part 2 of this guide). Click New Step.
34. In the first (This action relates to) section, set the action to be A trigger against the following list. Then select the list you're using for this. It'll be the same list you used a few moments ago.
35. In the second (Select a trigger) section, select the trigger as Update Profile.
36. In the two dropdowns underneath this, select the same folder and form as you did earlier.
37. In the third (Perform the following action(s)) section, enable just the Send the contact the message checkbox, and select your quiz results email.
38. In the fourth (Configure timing) section, set the timing to 2 minutes later. Our automation step should now look something like this:
    
39. Click Save. You'll now be taken back to the main page for the automation.
40. Optionally rename all of the individual automation steps to make their function clearer (as shown)...
    

Congratulations, you've just built the quiz-scoring & email-sending automation!

Part 4: Activate Your Automation

1. Select Automation from the sidebar.
2. Select the Advanced Automation tab.
3. Finally, click the ellipsis (...) next to the automation and choose Activate.

Part 5: Test It!

To test the workflow, you'll need to exist as a contact on the contact list you've used for this - so be sure to add yourself if you're not already a member of the list (you can do this by selecting Contacts from the sidebar, choosing your list, then clicking New Contact).

Next, you'll need to open the quiz form, login and submit your answers.

1. Select Lists and Forms from the sidebar.
2. Double-click on your chosen list, to enter Forms view.
3. Open your Certification Quiz form.
4. Click View Form near the top right.
5. Login with your email address.
   Your contacts won't have to login to anything if you are sending them a link to this form by email. The only reason you need to login, is because you're viewing the form directly and our system doesn't yet know which contact you want to use.
6. Answer the quiz. You may like to intentionally try and fail it, by getting a majority of the answers wrong. Submit the quiz.
7. Wait a few minutes - then you should receive the pass / fail email (with a 'fail' message). Use the button in the email to retake the quiz.
8. This time, choose all of the correct answers to pass the quiz. Wait a few minutes - then you should receive the pass / fail email (with a 'pass' message).

Well done! You've just built a fairly complex automation and tested it! When ready, you can build a new email to send the quiz to everyone on your list and away it goes!