March 19th, 2024

Recollective AI is Generally Available!

AI Summaries and AI Key Takeaways are now available to all customers, along with the inclusion of Study Objectives, ensuring that AI findings are shaped to your research goals.

AI Summaries

The generative AI technology behind this feature analyzes your recordings and generates meaningful summaries for faster review and analysis of video content with greater confidence that no insight is overlooked.

AI Summaries are available for all video content captured in Live Group Chats, Live Video Interviews, and for Video, Audio, and Screen Recording responses within Multimedia tasks.

Key Takeaways

In addition to Summaries, Key Takeaways derive a clear and direct set of bullet-point insights for Live Group Chats and Live Video Interviews.

Key Takeaways make for easy comparison between engagements to validate trends and to spot critical nuances in feedback that might otherwise be overlooked.

Study Objectives

To ensure AI is working in alignment with your research goals, we are also introducing Study Objectives. This feature allows you to direct the AI’s focus to better identify the most relevant aspects of any given contribution.

AI Feedback

Wherever AI Summaries & Key Takeaways are found within a Recollective site, Admins will have the opportunity to let us know what they think. Provide feedback with a thumbs up or down, and add any additional comments that will help us to further optimize and improve AI generated content to best support you in your work.

Be sure to keep an eye out for future updates and don’t hesitate to contact us if you have any questions. Learn more at Recollective.ai.

February 5th, 2024

Recollective Qualtrics Integration

The Recollective Qualtrics integration is a no-code, no-spreadsheet solution for researchers who want to connect one or more Qualtrics XM surveys to Recollective.

This integration enables researchers to map Qualtrics survey questions to corresponding panelist properties in Recollective. This allows importing a panel or redirecting qualified respondents to join a study while automatically creating data-rich profiles.

Leverage this integration to:

• Eliminate time spent manually reformatting and importing a spreadsheet
• Onboard participants in real-time
• Enrich qualitative research projects with integrated surveys and drive follow up questions based on external survey responses
• Regularly refresh your panel

The Recollective Qualtrics integration is available with every Recollective license and only requires access to your Qualtrics API Token and Datacenter ID to get started. Learn more about setting up this integration.

December 18th, 2023

Improved Segment Management

We're thrilled to introduce a major time saving improvement to segment management in Recollective. We understand the challenges our researchers face when managing numerous segments across multiple studies. Your feedback has been heard, and we're excited to unveil a segment management experience that simplifies and accelerates your workflow.

Bulk Updates to Segment Visibility

Gone are the days of tedious, click-heavy updates for each segment. With a new interactive side panel, making changes to many segments at once is a breeze!

The Segments page features a variety of other new tools to help you locate and manage segments.

Visibility Column & Visibility Filter: Easily locate segments that are visible in specific studies using the Visibility filter, or, quickly reference the Visibility column.

Keyword Search: Use the search to locate segments by name, providing a quick and efficient way to find the segments you need without navigating through the entire list or using clunky workarounds.

Your time is invaluable, and our commitment to enhancing your experience remains unwavering. We believe this update will not only boost your productivity but also help teams stay organized as you scale your research on Recollective.

Sort and Rank Task: Group Commentary

Recollective’s Sort and Rank Task is a favourite among researchers for gathering insights into how participants categorize and organize information. We know that understanding decision-making is essential to unlocking insight, so we’ve added new functionality the enables you to dive deeper.

Previously limited to a single additional commentary question for the entire task, now, with Group Commentary, you can ask a follow-up question about each group of cards.

Facilitate Open Card Sorts

There's more to Group Commentary than just probing; it's a versatile feature that can be used to facilitate open card sorts. By prompting participants to provide their own name, you gain a dynamic approach to categorization, free from the constraints of pre-named groups.

Summaries: Select multiple “Fill the Blanks” Task questions

Recollective empowers your analysis with robust filtering capabilities. The Summary tab's filters enable you to drill down on specific questions you’ve asked and will update not only the Stream view but also the Photos, Videos, Words and Charts tabs.

While filtering down to specific Activities, Tasks, or individual blanks in Fill the Blanks Tasks has always been an option, analyzing multiple blanks was not supported.

Take, for instance, word association exercises where each word is programmed as an individual blank – it was not possible to analyze responses in the same word cloud.

Now, researchers can filter on multiple blanks in the Summary, Activity Response Summary, or Participant Summary. Imagine effortlessly comparing responses in related blanks in the same Word cloud and across Stream, Photos, and Charts tabs. No more exporting hassles – flexible data analysis is just a few clicks away.

November 10, 2023

Improved AI-Powered Video Transcripts

Recollective has integrated the latest in AI technology to achieve industry-leading accuracy in its speech-to-text transcriptions. Customers can expect fewer transcription errors for all live meetings and asynchronously recorded audio, video and screen recordings.

Thanks to thorough testing since late August, Recollective has now made the new AI transcription engine the default processor for all customers. Recollective is committed to continuous improvement and will keep updating the transcription engine to ensure we remain at the leading edge. Accurate transcripts save time and improve all future AI-powered summaries and analyses.

Live Activities: Meeting Assistant

Hosting a live meeting can require a lot of focus and attention. To relieve the pressure on meeting hosts, Recollective now empowers backroom team members to provide support as a Meeting Assistant.

Analysts and Moderators in the backroom of a live meeting can now perform the following actions:

• Send chat messages to participants (standard or private)
• Create and share Prepared Items
• Invite participants to share their screen
• Mute participants and observers
• Remove participants from the meeting

To avoid confusion and to protect the backroom admin’s identity, posts visible to participants will be attributed to “Meeting Assistant.” The admin’s profile photo will also be replaced with a generic avatar in the meeting and transcript.

To ensure backroom team members do not accidentally post messages into the front room chat, the chat is initially locked, as shown below.

Smarter Paste Blocking

We recently introduced a new study setting that prevents participants from pasting external content into their task responses. This forces participants to type out their answers which significantly reduces the risk of receiving AI-generated content.

We understand that participants may occasionally need to copy and paste within their own responses, such as reordering paragraphs or bullet points. We have fine-tuned our paste-blocking feature to allow participants to copy and paste their own text while still preventing the pasting of external content.

Usability Improvements

• Improved Previewing of Sequenced Activities: Study administrators have access to a “Preview Mode” which lets them browse the study as a participant. Given that activities being tested typically haven’t started yet, admins can choose to ignore activity dates. Ignoring activity dates previously disabled the forced sequence of the activities as well. In this release, Preview Mode options are now separated to allow administrators to test the sequence of their upcoming activities. This update results in a more accurate and comprehensive preview, which ensures administrators can be confident that their activity flow aligns precisely with their research design.
• Accessible Keyboard Navigation: In our continued mission to make Recollective more inclusive, we have improved the accessibility of Media Uploads and the Video Review task types by adding full support for keyboard-based navigation.

October 9, 2023

Recollective AI: Video, Audio and Screen Recording Summaries

We are leveraging AI to help researchers get to insights faster. We recently released AI-powered summaries and key takeaways for live video interviews and live group chats. Now, we’re extending summarization to asynchronous tasks as well. All audio, video, and screen recording responses are instantly summarized for lightning fast consumption.

With our AI-powered summaries, you can spend less time sifting through recordings and more time delving into the heart of your research.

Get Early Access!

Our AI-powered solutions are being introduced progressively. If you're eager to try out these exciting new features ASAP, please sign up now for early access.

This is only the beginning…

We’re planning AI-powered features that will help you throughout every step of the research journey. Stay tuned for more groundbreaking developments that will redefine the way you conduct research and uncover insights. Learn more at Recollective.ai.

Other Usability Improvements

• Update to Paste Blocking: The ability to block the pasting of external content was introduced in the last release and can be enabled for an entire study or select tasks. In this update, participants are notified when their paste operation is blocked. Administrators can now also choose to bypass the block if this occurs while previewing a task.

• Live Video Interview calendar improvements: We’ve made it easier to distinguish between time slots that were marked unavailable, made unavailable due to a scheduled meeting, or not permissible due to conflicts.
• The rich-text editor toolbar is now keyboard accessible.

September 20, 2023

Recollective AI: Enhanced Summaries with Key Takeaways

We have already improved our AI-powered live meeting summaries by adding Key Takeaways as a new type of summary. Researchers are now instantly presented highlights of the most important information discussed in the meeting which helps them uncover new insights.

Our AI-powered solutions are being introduced progressively. If you're eager to try out these exciting new features, please sign up now for early access. Learn more at Recollective.ai.

Study Setting: Block Pasting

As a leading online qualitative research platform, ensuring the quality and authenticity of responses is of utmost importance. To prevent the use of generative AI for answering questions, we have implemented a new feature that blocks participants from pasting external content into their task responses. This forces participants to type out their answers, thus greatly reducing the risk of them submitting AI-generated content.

The paste-blocking option can be enabled on a task-by-task basis or as a study-wide option from Study Settings > Content Checks. If enabled for the study, exceptions can be made per task to allow pasting. Overall, we believe that this feature will lead to more authentic and valuable contributions.

Flexible Scheduling for Live Video Interviews

Recollective’s Live Video Interviews activity type already offers incredible scheduling capabilities. Participants can be empowered to pick their own meeting time slots and/or researchers can manually schedule new and follow-up meetings with ease.

We've improved the calendar component of the interview scheduling tool to offer greater flexibility. Previously, available meeting time slots were preset based on the planned meeting duration and any “buffer time” desired between meetings. While this approach optimizes for density and predictability, we heard from researchers that it lacked the flexibility they require in certain scenarios.

To address this, we've added a new Time Slots scheduling option when setting up a Live Video Interview activity. Administrators can choose between Flexible or Predictable time slots.

Flexible time slots allow meetings to be scheduled at any 15-minute increment regardless of meeting duration and buffer values. The full meeting time is still reserved and expressed to the meeting attendees. The overall start and end times for day are always respected and it still prevents double-booking within and across activities. Hosts can now also define their availability with greater precision.

Predictable time slots ensure available meeting times are preset based on the planned meeting duration and any buffer time needed between meetings. It effectively creates an optimized schedule in advance that maximizes the number of meetings that can fit within the activity start and end dates.

August 30, 2023

Introducing Recollective AI

Please visit Recollective.ai to learn how artificial intelligence will revolutionize the Recollective experience. You can sign up for early access to all our latest AI-powered features.

Improved Transcriptions

Accurate transcriptions are essential for unlocking the full potential of your research so we’ve upgraded our Automated Speech Recognition (ASR) engine to ensure the highest accuracy on the market.

Utilizing the latest in AI technology, Recollective can achieve near-human-level precision in its transcriptions. This benefits all live meetings, as well as asynchronously recorded audio, video and screen recordings.

Recollective is committed to continuous improvement and will keep updating the transcription engine to ensure we’re at the leading edge. Accurate transcripts save time and improve all the AI-powered summaries and analyses based on those transcripts.

Summarize Live Meetings

We are thrilled to announce the release of our first AI-powered summarization feature: the ability to automatically summarize live video meetings.

As a market researcher, you know that analyzing hours of recorded live video interviews and focus groups can be a daunting task. With our new AI-powered summarization feature, you can quickly identify trends, commonalities, preferences, and challenges among your participants.

The generative AI technology behind this feature analyzes your recorded meetings and generates concise and meaningful summaries, allowing you and your team to expedite the insight detection and decision-making process.

A new “Recollective AI” widget will soon appear above meeting transcripts. A general summary will be provided with more summary types to follow, such as Key Takeaways.

Get Early Access!

Our AI-powered solutions will be introduced progressively. If you're eager to try out these exciting new features ASAP, please sign up now for early access. Learn more at Recollective.ai.

August 11, 2023

New Study Type for Live Activity Only Licenses

Recollective is a fully featured online qualitative research platform that combines both asynchronous and live research capabilities into one solution. But what if you only want to run live research projects? Recollective can be used for live only research including online IDIs and live focus groups. Rather than paying for the whole suite of tools, Recollective offers both project and annual Live Video Only licenses at highly competitive rates.

By adding a Live Video Only license to your site, you can benefit from unlimited live activity only studies and meetings with unlimited participants. Contact us for more information about Live Video Only licensing.

Editing unlocked for Fill the Blanks Tasks

Let’s face it, typo’s happen. We know everyone makes them from time to tiem and that they can be embarasing 😳 Whether you’re looking to correct a typo, or add more context to a question when participants aren’t correctly interpreting what’s been asked, Admins now have the ability to edit the text above and below blanks in the Fill the Blanks response template.

Blanks cannot be added or removed after responses have been received to protect the integrity of the data you’ve collected and avoid any accidental purging of responses.

Faster Probing with Saved Message Templates

We made asking probing questions easier when we released our multi-purpose Message Templates. However, we've noticed that using templates for probing is not a well-known use case. To address this, we've made changes to how Message Templates are displayed in studies.

⏰ Did you know that you can even save your probing questions as Message Templates ahead of time when programming your study? Give this a try on your next project!

Usability Improvements

• More control over Pending Administrators: You no longer need to wait for an administrator to accept their study invitation to add them to a home page card or subscribe them to study notifications. Pending administrators - those who have been invited but have not yet joined - now appear in lists, making it easier to configure projects when your colleagues are out of office or in other timezones. We indicate that their invitation is still pending so that you can remind them to register before the study launches.
• Easily open the chat window during live meetings: You can now open the chat window by clicking anywhere on a chat message bubble.
• Ability to lock Poll Task choices when randomizing: Polls appear throughout Recollective, from Poll Tasks and Fill the Blanks Tasks to Screening Questions and Live Activities. To eliminate order bias, you can randomize choices and lock or anchor select choices in place. The Poll Task Type was missing the ability to lock choices, so we have added this functionality.
• Say goodbye to Live Video Interview scheduling conflicts: Now, when you remove a participant from a study, their scheduled live video interview meetings are automatically cancelled. This ensures that their meeting won't consume a meeting slot or host availability.

July 5, 2023

NEW Task Type: Audio Recording

We have expanded the Multimedia Task to include a new Audio Recording submission option. It can be enabled either individually or in combination with other submission types (e.g. text, photo, video, screen recordings, and file uploads).

Collecting audio recordings can provide valuable insights into participants' thoughts and emotions. Unlike written responses, audio captures the richness of spoken communication, conveying nuances that may be lost otherwise. It also provides a natural and spontaneous channel for participants to provide candid feedback, leading to a deeper understanding of their experiences and opinions.

The new Audio Recording option enables participants to record directly from within the platform using their desktop browser or mobile device. Audio-only recordings are easier to produce than video and are particularly suitable for those with privacy concerns. In some markets, such as Germany, video capture may not be permitted.

As with video submissions, audio recordings will be instantly transcribed. Saving excerpts from an audio transcript will create a matching audio clip that can be downloaded and/or added to a Video Playlist as a highlight reel.

Subscription Warnings: Access Ending Soon

We understand that research projects often come with many deadlines, and that tracking software subscriptions can be a pain point for researchers. To alleviate this burden, Recollective Analysts will now receive a banner message warning them 3 days prior to their Participant Access end date. This message will appear at the top of the page, providing a reminder that access is ending and an easy way to contact us for an extension if needed. Analysts will also be shown a banner message 5 days before their Administrator Access ends.

These messages will help ensure that you are never taken by surprise when your Recollective subscriptions end. If you do not need the reminder, simply Dismiss the banner or select Remind me later to see it again during your next visit.

Usability Improvements

• Resending invitations and other email communications has become easier: Every email delivered to a user by Recollective can be reviewed and resent from within the Site Administration area (i.e. select a Panelist or Administrator in Site Admin to locate these options). Emails are listed by their delivery date and include their subject line, related study and a read date if the message has been opened. Selecting the subject line reveals the full message and a “Resend” option. Previously, if a participant's email address was updated, the resend action would not detect the change and simply retry the original address. Recollective will now always resend emails to a user’s current email address. Just be sure to save any email address changes prior to using the “Resend” option. We hope this will save you a lot of time when correcting emails and resending missed invitations.
• Save time configuring new studies with site-level Privacy Settings: A new Settings section named "Privacy Settings" has been added to the Site Administration area. These settings act as the default privacy settings for all new studies created within the site. Privacy settings can still be customized within a study. For Recollective Connect license holders, these settings also determine how participants and administrators appear to one another within the site-level discussion Forums.

June 9, 2023

Live Activities: Transcript export of translations

We have added the transcription of any translators to the Excel version of the meeting transcript for both Live Video Interview and Live Group Chat Activities. When simultaneous translators assist live meetings, their dedicated audio channels will now be included in the final transcript export as a separate tab or worksheet in the Excel export.

System Check: Audio and video test updates

The System Check feature enables users to test their audio and video connections before joining a live meeting. During the video test, users are asked to confirm that their camera is functioning by previewing their camera feed. The audio test requires the user to make a brief recording and listen to it. With this update, users must follow all of these steps to receive a "Pass" status, ensuring that participants who have passed the System Check are ready for a successful live meeting experience. If a user cannot complete one of the tests, they can proceed to the remaining checks by selecting "Skip," but they will not receive a full pass on the System Check.

Single Sign On: Updating panelists with active sessions

Recollective's Single Sign-On (SSO) allows for automatic creation or updating of accounts and then initiating a new session without users needing to register or login.

In this release, we have further enhanced SSO to allow for account updates via SSO for users that are already logged into their Recollective site. This means that if a user has an active session within Recollective, they can still be redirected to Recollective via SSO and have any profile updates applied. Previously, these profile updates required that the returning user be logged out of Recollective prior to their arrival.

Live Activities: Group meeting improvements

We’ve made a number of smaller updates to the live meeting experience for Live Group Chat meetings to help it look and feel better while in a meeting:

• The sizing (aspect ratio) of the individual participant webcam video feeds is now more consistent regardless of the browser dimensions or device in use. This will reduce amount of variance and active resizing as the meeting interface updates.
• If a participant disables their camera while in a meeting, they are automatically re-sorted to appear after any participants that still have their camera enabled. If the user chooses to re-enable their camera, they will now appear as the last person with their camera enabled instead of being placed back into their previous position. This creates less visual disruption.
• For larger meetings, if an active speaker is not on the first “page” of the Gallery or Spotlight view, that person will now be moved to the last position on the first page rather than the second position (i.e. after your own video). This also creates less disruption.
• If a user changes their “Performance Profile” (e.g. an option to view more or less people per page to control bandwidth consumption), the connection update made by that change will no longer make it appear as if the user exited and re-entered the room. They will also remain in the same position in the Gallery view.

April 10, 2023

Bulk Export of Chart Summary Data Tables

Charts in Recollective can already be fully customized prior to being exported into various formats. The chart type, its title and description can all be modified. Charted elements can be combined, renamed and recolored. Even the decimal precision can be customized.

Sometimes, however, you might wish to recreate a set of charts in Excel to make use of Excel’s full charting capabilities. With this in mind, we’ve now made it easier to bulk export the summary data for all charts while preserving your customizations. Creating new charts in Excel from these exported summary data tables takes only a few clicks.

When exported, the data for each chart will appear as a separate worksheet within a single Excel workbook. Each worksheet will include metadata such as the task name, task type, source URL, and base number of responses. Any segments or advanced filters applied prior to export will be respected.

Admins with permission to export data from a study will find this new option on the Summary tab while viewing all available Charts. The option will also appear in the Activity Options menu.

Please watch the video below to see the Bulk Export of Chart Summary Data in action!

Single Sign-On Improvements

In February, we released an enhanced version of Single Sign-On (SSO). This release includes two important improvements to the new SSO experience:

• Automatic limiting of segment visibility: Segments created via SSO will now automatically be limited in visibility to the studies assigned during the same SSO request. The visibility can be updated at any time by editing the newly created segment.
• Deactivating and reactivating users: Users can now be deactivated or reactivated via the SSO login endpoint using a new status property.

Other Usability Improvements

• Automatic login for Admins invited to join a study: When inviting existing administrators to join a study, the invitation email will now perform an automatic login. This is will help manually pre-registered administrators to gain access to the site if it’s their first visit.
• Profile fields in CSV exports: Profile fields associated to panelists will now appear in all CSV exports alongside their segments. If profile field visibility has been limited for the study, this limitation will be respected.
• Accessibility improvements: To improve the accessibility of Recollective for users with visual impairments, various system colours have been updated to provide sufficient contrast to meet the WCAG standard for “AA” compliance.

March 23, 2023

New Study Setting: Profile Field Visibility in Studies

When reusing panelists across multiple studies, profile fields that were added exclusively for past studies may remain visible on panelist profiles within new studies. To address this issue, analysts and moderators can now control which profile fields appear in a study. By restricting profile fields, only the selected fields will appear in the study-level profiles of participants, as well as in any transcripts and exports.

See Profile Field Visibility in Studies in action!

Accelerated Live Support

We made several changes behind the scenes so that our Support Specialists can provide even more efficient live support to Hosts, participants, and backroom observers during live meetings.

Other Usability Improvements

• To improve the accessibility of Recollective for users with visual impairments, various colours have been updated to provide sufficient contrast to meet the WCAG standard for “AA” compliance.
• When adding a new Administrator account manually, there’s now one less step to remember when filling out the form. Force password change will be enabled by default.