I have created a survey, activated it and created tokens for 4 email addresses to do testing. I have tried to send emails to the individuals with the tokens assigned and when I click send invitations I receive notification that the invitations have been delayed because the tokens are not yet valid. However, I can access the survey using the display tokens icon and click on the answer survey icon against the token assigned next to my name (have organised for it to be sent to myself)

I have checked:
- that the token is activated during the time period.
- that the server time is adjusted to reflect the time where I am located i.e. Melbourne, Australia but I cannot all to no avail. help please!!!

is it that there is a delay between creating a token and it becoming usable or am I doing something extremely wrong?

any help would be fantastic!!! thank.

There should be no delay. Can you give a screenshot of the token table?

ellie wrote: is it that there is a delay between creating a token and it becoming usable or am I doing something extremely wrong?

any help would be fantastic!!! thank.

Can you quote the exact error message? I have never heard of such an issue before.

Hi All,

I have come across this discussion as I ran into the same error message today.
This (in my case) was linked to the start date defined in the token. The survey was to start on the 10th, yet I wanted to share the instructions and link (in the invitation) today (the 8th).

Switched the start date back to today and the invitation went out perfectly fine!

Hi Folks!

Have come across this error message again:

Email to XX (xx@xxx.org) delayed: Token is not yet valid. but with the final message that: All emails were sent.
I have tried to send them out now, but would want the tokens to be valid only as off sunday (it's for a test people shouldn't be able to access before that)

Any idea what as actually happened (messages a contradictory - have emails been sent?) ?

So let us get this straight:

-You have a token list
-You sent the emails with the token already
-However, the token is only valid from Sunday onwards.
-While sending the messages, you got an error message, saying "Email to XX (xx@xxx.org) delayed: Token is not yet valid"

Is this what happened?

Now some questions: this error message appeared for ALL emails, for some of them or only for one?

Hi Holch,

Yes that's correct and yes, the message was returned for all emails.
I thought the system might hold the invitation back and send them automaticaly later (at the start date/time of the token). I've tested but it did not happen.

mas_carpone wrote: I thought the system might hold the invitation back and send them automaticaly later (at the start date/time of the token). I've tested but it did not happen.

There is no feature to auto-send emails at a certain time. For technical reasons the action of sending an email always requires user interaction (= clicking a button). The only other alternative is using cron jobs to schedule email sending, see www.limesurvey-templates.com/automatical...nvitations-p-49.html .

Is there an "invitation sent" date set at the token overview?

If so, please test again by creating a dummy token which uses your email address. I assume the system will send the email though the token is not valid yet but please test.

Anyway, we should think about a better warning message. Maybe showing a warning about token valid date before actually sending the emails?!

I have tested and the system does not send the invitation at all (and the value "Invitation sent" rightly stays at "N").

Agree that the message is misleading (goves an error but also saiys "emails sent"), but more generally wouldn't it be better if participants could be invited before the actual start date of a survey? That way they have time to look at instructions, etc.

I personally would avoid sending invitations BEFORE the survey is online. Why? Your best chance that people complete the survey is when they open the survey and directly go into it.

Reading instructions beforehand? Probably a nice wish rather than reality.

Most people will open the survey, see the link, go for the link, see the token is not yet valid and leave. They probably never come back, even if they innitially wanted to. They'll simply forget it. So this means another reminder email.

Some might even think they did something wrong or there is something wrong with the survey.

So I would rather give them a little bit more time to read everything and complete the survey, rather than sending out a link that is not yet accessible. This might work with "high envolvement" respondents, but even there I have my doubts.

But this is just an addition. Of course the system should be clear about what is happening.

mas_carpone wrote: I have tested and the system does not send the invitation at all (and the value "Invitation sent" rightly stays at "N").

Agree that the message is misleading (goves an error but also saiys "emails sent"), but more generally wouldn't it be better if participants could be invited before the actual start date of a survey?

I agree that the system should send emails and should show a warning before that.
Please file a bug report at the bugtracker and post the link here. I will then take care of it.

holch wrote: I personally would avoid sending invitations BEFORE the survey is online. Why? Your best chance that people complete the survey is when they open the survey and directly go into it.

Reading instructions beforehand? Probably a nice wish rather than reality.

Most people will open the survey, see the link, go for the link, see the token is not yet valid and leave. They probably never come back, even if they innitially wanted to. They'll simply forget it. So this means another reminder email.

Some might even think they did something wrong or there is something wrong with the survey.

So I would rather give them a little bit more time to read everything and complete the survey, rather than sending out a link that is not yet accessible. This might work with "high envolvement" respondents, but even there I have my doubts.

But this is just an addition. Of course the system should be clear about what is happening.

In most cases yes, yet is there a good reason for not allowing it? There are cases, for example when you run "tests" that can only be accessible at a certain point in time, where it will be useful not to have to sit by your PC as an admin to launch the test but to be able to anticipate it.