Study Dashboard

Monitoring as a video

A narrated walkthrough (3:51) of a running study: the Overview, the participants who fall behind, one participant's page, the notifications, an announcement to the at-risk participants, and a reply to a participant's message. It is filmed in SMAAT with a demo study of sixteen participants. The narration is a synthetic voice; turn on captions in the player to read along.

Recorded in October 2026. Screens in newer versions of SMAAT may differ slightly. Chapters, transcript and all video tutorials →

Opening the dashboard

In the studies list, click Open dashboard on a study row. The dashboard address is /dashboard/studies/<study id>. The header shows Back to Studies, the study status, Edit Study (which opens the Study Builder), and the study title and description. Below the header is a row of tabs, each with its own address:

AI Review appears only for studies that use AI-tailored surveys.

Status pill

The status pill in the header shows the current status. A click opens a dialog with the six statuses (Draft, In Review, Active, Paused, Completed, Archived), each with a short description of what it means for participants. Selecting one changes the status, except Active: it opens Validate & Activate in the Study Builder, the only way a study becomes Active. The statuses are described in Study Management.

Read-only view for collaborators

Project members who are not the study author see a Read-only badge, a status label without the dialog, and View Design instead of Edit Study. Their tabs depend on the access granted to them (design, participants or data). Announcements and AI Review are shown to the author only. See Projects and Collaboration.

Overview

The Overview tab requires a verified researcher email address; until the address is verified, it shows a verification prompt instead of data. Four rings at the top summarise the study:

• Participants: participants with the status Enrolled out of all participants. The line underneath counts the participants who completed the study, those who dropped out (On Hold or Withdrawn), and the enrolled participants at risk.
• Today's responses: responses received today, compared with the number of survey notifications sent today ("of N expected").
• Compliance: the mean compliance of all participants over the last 14 days. A participant's compliance is the share of survey notifications sent to them that were completed. Announcements are not counted. The ring shows the target threshold underneath.
• Storage: file storage used by the study, compared with the storage of the study owner's plan (Free 50 MB, Basic 1 GB, Pro and Team unlimited).

Below the rings, Response activity plots daily completed surveys over the last 14 days, and Notification funnel plots, per day, the survey notifications sent and those that led to a response. Workspace tiles link to the Participants, Invitations, Notifications, Data, Quality, Burden and Messages tabs, each with a count.

At-risk participants and Needs attention

An enrolled participant is at risk when their compliance over the last 14 days is below the threshold; participants who completed the study or withdrew are not counted. The threshold is the Alert threshold set under Study Builder → Engagement → Compliance Alerts; a study that has never saved that setting uses 70%, the same default as the Quality tab and the alert emails. The At-risk participants table lists up to six of them with their code, compliance, trend and last activity.

The Needs attention panel collects items that call for action: participants below 30% compliance, conversations waiting for a reply (the participant wrote last), at-risk participants, and a scheduled close date within the next three days. Quick actions link to Send announcement, Message at-risk (opens a new announcement addressed to the at-risk participants), Invite new participants, Open protocol and Run quality check. Study timeline shows the scheduled open and close dates when they are set.

Participants

The Participants tab, headed "Manage Participants", starts with four summary cards: Total, Enrolled, On Hold and Completed. The table can be searched by participant code, filtered by status and by group code, and shown with 10, 25, 50 or 100 rows per page. The columns are:

• Participant · Group: the participant code and the group code as editable fields. Edits take effect after Save changes in the page header. Participant codes must be unique within the study.
• Status: Enrolled, On Hold, Completed or Withdrawn, with buttons that act immediately. Pause sets an enrolled participant to On Hold and Resume sets them back to Enrolled. Mark as Completed and Mark as Enrolled switch between Enrolled and Completed. Notifications go only to Enrolled participants.
• Activity: last activity, with the enrollment date underneath.
• Access: the number of required permissions granted (details on hover). If a survey uses email or SMS, the channel status is shown as well, for example "Email not verified" or "Not enabled by participant".
• Actions: Details, Edit Notes, Send payment / bonus (only when participant payments are enabled) and Remove.

A participant can also be set to On Hold from the app, with Pause data collection. Participants become Withdrawn when they leave the study in the app, and Completed when automatic completion rules are met (see Study completion rules).

Removing and restoring participants

Remove is available only for participants who are Completed or Withdrawn. Several participants can be selected and removed at once with Remove (n). Removal hides a participant from the active list and moves them to the Removed participants section below the table. Their notifications, datasets and gamification history stay linked, and removed participants do not count toward the plan's participant limit. Restore returns a participant to the active list. A removed or withdrawn participant who joins the study again is re-enrolled with the status Enrolled.

Exporting the participant list

Export → CSV or XLSX downloads the list with participant code, group code, status, enrollment and last-active times, notes, stable ID, one column per permission, locale and app information, and the device, system and screen information of participants who agreed at sign-up to share it.

Plan limit

A banner appears when the study approaches or reaches the participant limit of the plan. If a study has more participants than the limit allows, the rows beyond the limit (by enrollment order) are marked Upgrade and cannot be edited. The limits per plan are listed in Participant Management.

Participant details

Details opens one participant's page. It shows the stable ID, participant code, group code, status, enrollment and last-active times, permissions, and the notification channels when a survey uses email or SMS. A collapsible Technical Details section holds the device token, locale and app information, and the device, system and screen information. Sharing device, system and screen information is optional at sign-up, so these fields can be empty. Prescreening answers, including baseline measures, appear in their own panel, and the page has a field for notes.

The Notifications section lists the participant's notifications with filters for status (Scheduled, Sent, Delivered, Opened, Completed, Failed or Canceled) and a date range. The Outcome column explains why a prompt was missed, for example dismissed, not delivered or ignored. Selected notifications can be removed, the list can be exported as CSV, and Notification Plan shows the participant's schedule. When participant payments are enabled, a Payments panel shows the total paid to the participant in this study and the list of payments.

Sending a payment or bonus

When payments are enabled for the study, Send payment / bonus opens a dialog with Amount (in the study's currency) and Note (optional). The amount is paid from the researcher's payout wallet, and the participant can withdraw it from the Wallet screen of the app. Payment rules are configured in Payments, gamification and compliance alerts.

Invitations

The Invitations tab has two sub-tabs, Fixed Strategies and Custom Invitations. A banner above them states whether participants can join. In Draft or In Review the study is in testing mode: participants can join and see a notice in the app. When the study is Paused or Completed, join attempts return "Study not found".

The video Activate and invite participants shows both sub-tabs, from the study code to a custom invitation email.

Fixed strategies

• Study Code: a code that participants enter in the app under Find a Study → Code.
• Study Links: a Web Link to the public study page and an App Link (for smartphones) that opens the study in the app, with a QR code of the app link and a Copy QR Code button.
• Search: the visibility of the study in the app's study search. A public study can be found by its name; the button switches between public and private.

Custom invitations

Custom invitations are personal: each carries its own participant code, an optional group code and an optional email address. + Create Invitations accepts a CSV file or a pasted list with the columns participantCode,groupCode,email. All three columns are optional; a missing participant code is generated. Each invitation gets a link and a three-word invitation code (for example happy-blue-fish), which participants can enter in the app under Find a Study → Invitation.

The table lists participant code, group code, link, status, and creation and update times. Each row can be edited, shown as a QR code or deleted. With rows selected, Delete Selected (n) deletes them and Send Emails (n) opens the Send Invitation Emails dialog (subject, plain-text message and preview). SMAAT adds each participant's invitation link and code, the app store links, the study page link and a contact address to the message. The message cannot contain links. Sending needs a verified email address on your account, and participants' replies go to it. Only selected invitations that have an email address and the status Created are counted and emailed, at most 500 per researcher in 24 hours (50 on the Free plan and in an account's first 7 days). An invitation's status changes from Created to Sent when its email has been sent, and to Registered when a participant has joined with it.

Notifications

The Notifications tab lists every notification of the study, survey prompts and announcements alike. Summary cards count Total, Announcements (excluded from compliance), Scheduled, Sent, Delivered (push confirmed on the device), Opened, Completed and Failed. Filters narrow the list by status (Scheduled, Sent, Delivered, Opened, Completed, Failed or Canceled), by type (survey notifications or announcements only), by date range and by recipient, and a search box filters by text. Reset Filters clears them.

The table columns are Participant Code, Type, Survey Title, Status, Scheduled At, Sent At and Reminders. Notification Title and Notification Body are hidden by default and can be shown with the column selector. Row icons give further information:

• A quiet-time indicator marks notifications that fall into the participant's quiet time; no push, email or SMS is sent for them (the prompt is skipped, not delayed), and the survey stays visible in the app.
• View Error Details on a failed notification opens its error log.
• View Participant Issues on a scheduled notification lists problems such as a participant who is not Enrolled or has notifications switched off.
• View delivery details & statistics opens the delivery details dialog.
• Edit Notification is offered for scheduled notifications whose time lies in the future. Delete Notification is offered on every row.

Remove Selected deletes the selected notifications, and Export CSV downloads the list.

Delivery details

The dialog "Delivery details" shows the status, the scheduled and sent times, the channels with their order, and the delivery strategy (all channels at once, or fallback with the escalation delay between channels). A table lists each channel with its send status, the number delivered and the time sent. Responded via (last-touch) names the channel credited with the response, when it was recorded. The error log of the notification is shown at the bottom.

SMS credits panel

A collapsible SMS credits panel at the top of the tab shows the account's SMS credit balance. The balance is shared across all studies of the account, and SMS sending stops at zero. Buy credits opens the Funds page. The field This study's monthly SMS cap limits the number of SMS this study may use per month, with the usage of the current month shown next to it. Channels, delivery strategies and credits are described in Notification Channels.

Announcements

Announcements are one-off messages to participants that do not ask for a survey response, for example a note at the study midpoint. They are excluded from compliance figures. The tab shows the number of announcements sent, recipients reached, the last send time and the number scheduled, followed by the list Sent announcements and a set of templates.

New announcement opens the composer with a title, a message, an optional starting template and a phone preview. The Audience is one of:

• All active participants
• At-risk (compliance < threshold)
• By group code
• Pick participants

The composer notes that targeting a subgroup can introduce selection bias. Every announcement is sent as a push notification. With Post to each participant's chat (on by default), the text is also placed in each participant's conversation, so that replies arrive in the Messages tab. Send now sends immediately; Schedule for later sets a date and time. A sent announcement cannot be withdrawn. A scheduled announcement can be edited or deleted until it is sent.

Messages

The Messages tab holds one conversation per participant. Participants write from the Messages card on their study screen in the app. The chat list has three categories: Unread, Inbox (all conversations that are not archived) and Archived. New Message starts a conversation with a participant chosen from a searchable list. For the selected conversation, the panel shows the participant's status, group, enrollment date and last activity. A conversation can be archived and unarchived, notes on the participant can be edited, and single messages can be deleted.

Data, Sensors, Quality, Burden and AI Review

• Data: survey responses, response analytics and exports. See Data Overview.
• Sensors: passive sensor data collected in the background. See Background Sensor Data.
• Quality: compliance, missing data, data quality checks and a change log. See Data Quality.
• Burden: an estimate of the time the study asks of participants, with the views Overview, Breakdown, What-if and Evidence & Export. Evidence & Export can add a time-commitment statement to the informed consent.
• AI Review: AI-tailored survey content waits here until the researcher approves, edits or rejects it.

Next steps