Creating & managing briefs

A project is the wider research or activity you are running. It can contain one brief or several related briefs that form part of the same study.

For example, a product test project could include:

• Brief 1 – Initial product feedback: explore participants’ first impressions, expectations and reactions to the product.
• Brief 2 – Product experience: ask participants to use the product and share their experience.
• Brief 3 – Follow-up feedback: understand what participants liked or disliked, what could be improved and whether they would use or purchase the product.

A brief is the individual survey or task completed by community members. The project is the wider study that brings those related briefs together.

Adding a project name allows Knowledge AI to group briefs that belong to the same project and analyse the findings across them. 

A project can therefore include just one brief, or multiple related briefs, depending on how your study is structured.

A brief is the research activity or questionnaire that you create for community members to complete.

A brief can include written questions, single-select or multi-select questions, rankings, open-text responses, images, videos and other media tasks or other question types, depending on the research objectives.

Before publishing, check the wording, response options, logic, reward, audience and end date carefully. Always preview your brief before launching (to test it).

Linked briefs allow one parent brief to connect multiple identical briefs launched to different audiences, such as markets, regions, channels or segments.

This lets responses be consolidated into a single reporting layer in Advanced Dashboard while still allowing comparison between audiences via creating segmentations.

Full guide: Using linked briefs to compare survey groups

Open the brief-building area (Plus sign) and select the option to create a new brief.

In the builder, add the brief title, main image and description, choose the channel, set the internal name and project name, which will enable Knowledge AI analysis, define the audience, add the questions, preview the brief, then set the reward, the launch date and notifications.

When everything is ready, publish/launch the brief.

Full guides: Brief Building Guidelines and Best Practices / How to create "Empty brief", test it, and launch it / How to create a brief from a word document / How to create a brief with a template

While building your brief in MyBulbshare, click Continue to save your progress before moving to the next step.

If you need to leave the brief builder, click the X to exit. Make sure you have clicked Continue first, so your latest changes are saved. If you refresh or close the page before clicking Continue, your unsaved changes will be lost.

Once your brief is ready to go live, go to the Launch section. Select Launch to make it live straight away, or Schedule if you would like it to launch at a later date and time.

Depending on your set-up, you may be able to use:

• Open text
• Multi-select and single-select
• A/B
• Swipe
• Image highlight
• Image grid
• Media capture
• Ranking
• Info Image
• Group

Choose the question type that best matches the information you need. Make response options clear, mutually exclusive where appropriate and easy for participants to understand.

Full guide: Survey question types and setup

Logic allows participants to follow different routes through a brief depending on their answers.

Logic can be set on answer options in supported question types. Single-select questions offer the most flexibility. Multi-select questions have more limited logic options, and Other or None of these do not support logic.

If a response needs to control the participant’s route, use a separate question type that supports logic where appropriate.

Full guide: Survey logic types & how they work

Not every response option can be used for routing.

Other and None of these do not support logic. Multi-select questions also have more limited routing options than single-select questions.

If you need a response to determine the route, use a separate single-select question or another logic-enabled question where appropriate.

Full guide: Survey logic types & how they work

If your survey logic is not behaving as expected, review your logic conditions carefully, make sure the questions are linked correctly, and test all participant pathways in Preview before launch.

Incorrect setup or overlapping logic rules may cause questions to display unexpectedly. If the issue continues, submit a Support Request.

Full guide: Survey logic types & how they work

Use the correct logic for the screening questions:

• End Fail = the participant will not be paid and will not be notified about the reward
• End Success = the participant will be paid and will be notified about the reward

Full guide: Survey logic types & how they work

Under the General section, choose the channel and select Advanced to enable audience setup.

Under the Audience section, apply the required demographic filters, add any tags you need, and set the required number of responses. Review the resulting audience carefully before launching.

If you will need Auto Tags for future targeting (follow up studies), configure them in your brief before launch.

Full guides: How to set up the audience for your brief / How to create auto tags for community profiling or for future follow-up activities / How to create a manual tag

Tags are used to include or exclude participants in audience setup.

Auto Tags are created from supported question types, such as multiple or single choice, A/B and swipe, while the brief is live. 

Manual tags are created in Business Lab using predefined criteria or previous responses for future briefs.

Tags cannot be used to target individual questions within a brief. If different question paths are needed, use logic.

Full guides: How to create auto tags for community profiling or for future follow-up activities / How to create a manual tag

Yes. Audience settings can still be updated after a brief has gone live without losing existing responses.

For live briefs with responses, you can still update:

• Channel
• Filters
• Tags
• Response limits

You can also update:

• Survey title
• Survey description

However, survey questions cannot be changed once responses have been collected, as this would cause existing answers to be lost.

If major survey changes are required after launch, it is recommended to clone the brief, make the required updates and relaunch it.

Full guide: How to set up the audience for your brief

Different areas of the platform may use different audience calculations.

For example, one area may show the total number of registered community members, while another may show active members, members active within the last 90 days or members matching a specific tag.

It is therefore normal for the figures shown in the channel, audience and tag areas not to match exactly.

The introduction should explain what participants need to do before they begin.

Include any important instructions, such as:

• What the activity is about
• How long it should take
• Whether participants need to upload photos or videos
• Whether they need to be at a specific place, such as at home, in-store or any other location
• Any quality requirements (example - if applicable - clearly state that all submissions must be genuine, participant-created content. AI-generated, heavily edited, stock, or otherwise inauthentic images and videos are not permitted and may result in the submission being rejected or deemed ineligible for any associated reward).
• Whether there is a reward and how much they will get paid
• Any deadlines or completion requirements

The introduction is important because participants need to understand what is expected before they start.

Full guide: Brief Building Guidelines and Best Practices

Uploaded images are not auto-fitted in the platform for all question types, so the correct template needs to be used to make sure they are fully visible in the app.

If images are not displaying properly, check the image size guidelines and make sure the correct format is being used.

Full guide: Image templates and recommended dimensions

If the text in your Info Image disappears after it has been added, check whether it contains double quotation marks (").

Double quotation marks are not supported and may cause the text to be removed. To resolve the issue, remove the quotation marks completely or replace them with single quotation marks (').

Example:

• Do not use: "Your feedback is important"
• Use instead: 'Your feedback is important'

After making this change, save the Info Image and check that the text displays correctly. Always review your brief using Preview before launching it.

Full guide: Survey question types and setup

Once your questionnaire is built, click Preview survey.

Then choose the view you want to test, such as Desktop, Tablet or Mobile, so you can see how it appears to community members. Preview responses are not saved. We recommend always testing it under Mobile view as most of the community members will complete it on their phones.

Full guide: How to preview your brief

If your brief preview does not open, please check that all questions have been completed correctly.

An empty question, an unfilled required field, or a question with blank response options can cause an error and prevent the preview from loading. Please review each question in your brief and remove or complete any empty question or option.

Once all questions and response options have been completed, try previewing the brief again.

Full guide: How to preview your brief

A brief can close automatically if it reached its end date, the required number of responses, or the reward limit (Total units).

Depending on what caused the closure, you may need to make one or more of the following changes:

• Update the end date
• Increase the Required responses number
• Increase the reward budget by updating Total Units

If the brief has already closed, the end date is automatically set to the date and time the brief closed, so you will still need to update the end date if you want it to remain live for longer.

Go to my.bulbshare.com, locate the relevant brief, click the three dots (⋯) and select Edit. Then go to the Launch section, set a new end date, and save your changes by clicking Publish.

Go to my.bulbshare.com, click Business Lab, then go to the Briefs section. Locate the relevant brief and click the brief line, or select Edit. Then go to the Launch section and change the Start date.

If the start date is changed, you may not be able to send notifications from my.bulbshare anymore, and you will need to send them from Business Lab under the Comms section within the brief.

Go to my.bulbshare.com, locate the relevant brief, click the three dots (⋯) and select Edit. Then go to the Audience section, increase the Required responses number, and save your changes by clicking Publish.

If the brief has already closed, you will also need to go to the Launch section, set a new end date, and publish again. If incentives were set up, check that sufficient reward / incentive allocation is still available - Total units under reward set up.

If a brief has been launched to the community and already has responses, the questions cannot be changed, as doing so would result in the loss of existing answers. In this case, the brief can be cloned, updated and relaunched.

If a follow-up question is required for users who have already responded, a follow-up brief can be launched and targeted only to those respondents.

If a brief has been launched to the community but has no responses yet, the brief can be deactivated or closed to prevent further participation. The questions can then be updated before relaunching the brief.

For a live brief with responses, the following can still be changed without losing responses:

• Survey title
• Survey description
• Survey audience, including channel, filters, tags and response limits

If the reward budget has been fully used, your brief will be also closed (end date is automatically set to the date and time the brief closed).

Go back to the existing reward setup and increase the Total Units allocation.

Do not create a new reward for the same activity. 

Then increase the required responses number (if relevant) and update the end date. When everything is ready, publish/launch the brief.

Full guide: How to add rewards/incentives to a brief / Incentive / Reward Setup - Best Practices / Incentive / Reward Amount Recommendations – Best Practices

If your brief requires more responses:

• Check whether the brief is still open
• Review the response limit settings
• Confirm that sufficient reward or incentive allocation is still available

If the reward / incentive budget has been fully used, the response limit has been reached, or the brief end date has passed, the brief will automatically close and participants will no longer be able to complete it. You will need to update the relevant setting and publish the brief again.

To boost your responses , you may also need to:

• Send additional notifications to your community via mobile notification and/or email
• Schedule future notifications to increase participation over multiple days
• Check whether a reward or incentive has been added to the activity
• Contact Support via Support Request ticket if you need to add a reward or incentive after the brief has already gone live - Reward should be always set up before launch.
• Extend the brief timeline
• Increase targeting
• Review audience eligibility settings depending on your project setup

Full guides: Notifications - Best Practices / Incentive / Reward Setup - Best Practices

Launching a brief does not automatically send email or mobile notifications.

Notifications must be created, scheduled and sent manually from the Launch section. For best response rates, send an initial notification when the brief goes live, then follow up with reminder notifications during fieldwork.

Full guide: How to create "Empty brief", test it, and launch it / Notifications - Best Practices