Detailed Topic Guide Settings

Use study settings to match the interview experience to the evidence you need. Editing requires study editing access; locked or unavailable controls cannot be changed from the current view.

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Key Topics Covered

Recording controls camera and screen capture. AI interviewer controls spoken questions and tone. Security & access controls repeat participation, device restrictions, and inactivity limits. Routing properties defines participant information used in conditions.

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Pro Tips

Test the actual device, language, and recording combination participants will use. A selected setting does not guarantee usable media or participant attention. Describe the recording requirements accurately on the welcome page.

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Quick Reference

Check the saved values for your study. Templates and duplicated studies can carry their own settings; do not assume a universal default.

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Complete Written Guide

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Step 1: Access Detailed Settings

Open Design → Advanced settings. Its main tabs are Recording, AI interviewer, Security & access, and Routing properties. Review the save status after changes.

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Step 2: Add Welcome Page Branding

In Participant welcome page, edit the participant-facing title and introduction. Welcome page media for participants accepts an image or video. Use Show organization logo on welcome page when the organization’s logo should appear. Preview the welcome page in the relevant participant language. Welcome media is separate from a stimulus attached to a question or section.

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Step 3: Configure Interview Behavior Settings

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Camera recording

• Required: participants must provide camera video.
• Optional: participants can opt in to camera video.
• Off: participants complete without camera video; this does not turn off their spoken responses.

Camera quality checks may ask participants to improve their setup, but do not cancel an interview. There is no quality-check mode to select in these settings. See participant camera quality prompts. Features that rely on camera footage need usable video. Optional camera recording does not guarantee that every interview will support video-based analysis.

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Screen sharing

Turn on Request screen sharing, then choose Single window or Entire screen. Participants still need to grant capture permission and select an appropriate source. Questions using task observation with screen sharing require the study’s screen-sharing setting. Check those questions before attempting to turn capture off. Screen capture depends on the participant’s browser and device; test the intended journey.

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Spoken questions and voice recording

Enable text-to-speech reads questions aloud. Where text-to-speech is unavailable for a selected language, participants read the questions and respond verbally. Turning this off is not a switch to a typed-only interview. Use the available voice controls for the study’s languages and preview a voice before fielding. Available choices depend on the language and voice configuration. Record AI interviewer voice is in beta and currently applies to web interviews using ElevenLabs voices. It includes the AI moderator’s voice in playback; it does not control whether questions are read aloud during the interview.

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Device restriction and inactivity

Lock interview to original device restricts the interview URL to the device and browser where it was first started. This can prevent switching devices or forwarding that session link, but it is not a guarantee against fraud. Check the participant’s intended device before they begin. Abandonment timeout controls when an inactive interview is marked abandoned. Choose 3–14 days. Do not use an inactivity timeout as the timing mechanism for a scheduled diary break; configure a pause instead.

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Step 4: Select AI Interviewer Tone

Choose Formal, Friendly, Humorous, or Neutral in Tone. Tone guides the moderator’s style. It does not replace clear question wording or your probing instructions.

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Step 5: Schedule Pauses in Diary Studies

Enable Allow multiple completions for diary functionality, then use a question’s No pause after control to set a break. Pauses within an interview and breaks between completed entries have different effects. Follow Diary studies for entry limits, timing, enforcement, and return behavior.

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Participant properties

Use Routing properties to define categorical or numeric participant attributes needed for routing or related recruitment conditions. Define properties before supplying participant data, then check that required values are present and correctly typed. Missing or invalid values can cause dependent questions to be skipped. The property schema locks once a participant upload exists or a non-CSV recruitment panel exists. Configure CSV participant properties before those steps; do not assume adding a property later is available.

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Availability of advanced features

Some accounts have additional preview controls. Native-app redirection, experimental camera capture, and internal model controls are not generally available settings. Do not plan a participant workflow around a control that your account does not expose.

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Best Practices

Run a test interview after changing languages, recording requirements, or access settings. Review the live-edit guidance before modifying a fielded study. Verify the resulting recording and transcript rather than relying only on the saved configuration.

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Configure participant consent forms

In study Design, use Consent form → Add consent form to create a form or reuse an available organization form. Creating, editing, and removing study forms requires study editing access. A new form can also be saved for reuse by the organization. Use a title and written content, or upload a PDF. The text editor allows up to 10,000 characters; the PDF picker accepts files up to 10 MB. For multilingual studies, review translated wording and provide localized PDF versions for the relevant languages. Participants can review the forms and must accept the required forms to continue. Editing a form publishes a new revision. Earlier wording and recorded acceptances are preserved. If someone has the old form open when it changes, submitting that outdated revision requires confirmation of the current wording; Conveo does not silently record acceptance of text the participant did not see. A later edit does not mean past participants accepted the new revision. Removing a custom form stops presenting it to participants. A form with recorded acceptances is retired while its consent history is retained. Default terms cannot be removed. Test the welcome and consent flow after changing forms, including each relevant language.