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Online Tasks let you link any external research activity — a usability test, survey, prototype evaluation, or custom tool — to Great Question. You keep screening, invites, and incentives inside Great Question even when the activity itself runs elsewhere.

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What Is an Online Task?

An Online Task points participants at a link you provide — hosted on whatever tool you’re already using — while Great Question handles recruiting, screening, invites, and incentives around it.

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Why It Matters

Online Tasks centralize your workflow even when you use multiple research tools, reduce tool-hopping by keeping screening, invites, and incentives in one place, and let you scale external research without losing visibility into participant progress.

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Common Use Cases

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Set Up an Online Task

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Step 1: Create Your Study

  1. Navigate to Studies in the left-side menu.
  2. Click New study and select Online task (“Launch a test from a different provider.”) — you’ll find it under Surveys & other.
  3. Configure your study details — title and research goal, participation limit, participant segments (optional), time commitment, external recruitment (optional), incentives (optional), screener questions (optional), consent form, custom study attributes, automatic slot-release settings, and participant language preferences.
  4. Review your plan, then click Next.

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Step 2: Set Up Your Screener (Optional)

Add multiple-choice, text, or scale questions using the screener editor. Apply logic under Preferences or view the full rules under All Logic, then review and click Next.

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Step 3: Configure External Recruitment (Optional)

If you’re using Great Question’s external recruitment marketplace integration for sourcing, enter the participant count, request title, description, and recruitment criteria, then review and click Next.
  1. Paste the URL of your external test or survey into the Task link field.
  2. Ensure the link is accessible and publicly shareable — no login walls unless intended.
  3. Click Next.

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Step 5: Review and Publish

Check all sections for accuracy. When ready, click Create to publish your study.

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Manage Your Study After Publishing

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Setup

  • Plan — Adjust participant limits, incentives, study attributes, or segments.
  • Task — View and adjust your task link.
  • Incentives — Manage incentive settings.
  • Screener — Edit screener questions or update logic.
  • Emails — Customize participant-facing communications, including screener invitations, study invites, task reminders, cancellation notices, and completion emails.
  • Pages — Update the Landing Page and Screener Disqualification Page.
  • Automations — Send invitation reminders to candidates who have not responded within 24 hours, and task reminders to participants who have not completed after 24 hours.
  • Notifications — Choose which email alerts you want to receive.

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Execution

  • Participants — Add candidates, track progress, and manage status. This is where most post-publish activity takes place.
  • Recruitment Requests — Manage recruit requests.
  • Screener Responses — Review responses to determine eligibility.
  • Stats — View email performance metrics such as delivery, opens, and clicks.

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Results

  • Repository — This is the only Results tab for Online Tasks; there’s no separate Summary view. Use it to manually save or upload external results, screenshots, or files from the tool you ran the task in.

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Completion Tracking

External tools don’t automatically notify Great Question when a participant finishes — by default, you’ll need to mark participants Completed manually, or add a confirmation question to your task flow, so progress and incentives track correctly.
Note: There is a way to make completion automatic, but it requires setup on the external tool’s side. When a participant starts the task, Great Question appends a gq_token to the link. If your external tool can redirect back to /go/complete with that same gq_token, Great Question marks the participant completed on its own. Most external tools aren’t configured to do this by default — treat manual completion as your realistic default unless you’ve set this up.

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Troubleshooting

IssueWhat’s HappeningHow to Fix
Task link doesn’t openThe link may not be public or accessible.Confirm the link is publicly accessible, then update the Task link field.
Participants show as “Invited” after completing the external taskThis is expected by default — external tools don’t automatically tell Great Question a task was finished.Mark participants as Completed manually, add a confirmation question, or set up the redirect-based auto-complete callback if your tool supports it.
Participants click the link but don’t submitThey may be leaving before the external tool’s final step.Ask participants to stay until the final confirmation page loads on the external site.
Incentives not sentThe participant isn’t marked Completed yet.Update participant status to Completed, or trigger the incentive manually.
External task displays an errorThe external test itself may be down or unpublished.Republish your external test and update the link in Great Question if it changed.
Task appears cut off on mobileThe external tool may not be optimized for mobile.Add instructions recommending desktop completion if your external tool needs it.
No activity shows in Great QuestionCompletion and results for an external tool aren’t tracked automatically.Add confirmation questions to mark progress, and upload results into the Repository tab.
Still need help? Contact us at support@greatquestion.co — median response time is 19 minutes during support hours.