REDCap (https://redcap.partners.org/redcap) upgrades to v8.5.24 scheduled for Thursday August 9th at 7:30AM EDT are complete. REDCap was offline from 7:30-8:07AM EST.
Full release notes can be found here.
If you have any concerns about REDCap being offline at this time, please email edcsupport@partners.org
Important: New Method For Composing Survey Invitations!
One of the new features included in the upgrade to v.8.5.19 is the ability to fully customize survey invitations. The standard text and survey link are no longer automatically appended to the text you provide.
For most users, the transition will be seamless. However, we recommend that users review any projects that utilize Automatic Survey Invitations to ensure their survey text is displaying as expected.
For groups using the Twilio service, the projects should be reviewed as soon as possible, especially ones using Automated Survey Invitations. You may need to manually add in a reference to [survey-url] or [survey-link] into the text depending on your invitation preference.
This is how the new feature is detailed in the REDCap release notes:
Improvement/change: New method for composing survey invitation text using Smart Variables for survey link
When composing a survey invitation, the standard text and survey link are no longer automatically appended to the survey invitation text at the time the email is sent. Instead, users must now specify all the entirety of the text of the email (including the stock text and survey link that used to be appended automatically, if they wish) and therefore must supply [survey-url] and/or [survey-link] in the text if they wish to provide the participant with a link to the survey.
If the user forgets to enter the survey URL Smart Variable in the text, REDCap will automatically suggest to them that they should.
If using the Twilio telephony module for sending invitations, the standard instructional text will still be appended in the SMS message as in previous versions EXCEPT for the “Email invitation” and “SMS invitation (contains survey link)” invitation types, which require [survey-url] and/or [survey-link] in the SMS text in order for the participant to receive a survey link.
Note: All survey invitations that were scheduled prior to this upgrade will still have the standard text and survey link appended to their survey text. Additionally, during the upgrade to this version, all saved configurations for Automated Survey Invitations (ASIs) will have the standard text and survey link automatically appended to the saved ASI email text, thus allowing the ASI behavior to remain exactly the same after the upgrade and allowing it to be backward compatible.