Setup Qualtrics SSO Branch Authentication Settings


Qualtrics is an experience management platform commonly used for surveys. You can set up your surveys to require respondents to authenticate with Central Authentication Service (CAS) or Shibboleth before taking the survey. You can use these authentication methods to collect some information about your respondents. Shibboleth allows you to collect more information from your respondents than CAS.

Set up CAS authentication

CAS can only pass the username of a person to the survey data.

  1. In Qualtrics, open your project.
  2. Click Survey -> Survey Flow from the menu.
  3. Click Add New Element Here.
  4. Select Authenticator. 
  5. Change the Authentication Type to SSO.
    Illustration for the Authentication type from Branch on Successful Authentication
  6. Uncheck the box for Associate Respondent with Panel.
    • Check the box for Capture respondent identifying info.
    • Set SSO Type to CAS.
    • Set Hostname to login.umd.edu.
    • Set Port to 443.
    • Set URI to cas. 
  7. Configure Show Block: Default Question Block so that it is the child of the Branch on Successful Authentication block. This way, your respondents will be prompted to authenticate before seeing your survey.
    Show Block: Default Question Block is the child element of Branch on Successful Authentication block.
  8. As a child element of Branch on Successful Authentication, Click Add a New Element Here.
  9. Select End of Survey.
  10. Move End of Survey to follow the block with your survey questions.
  11. Click Save Flow to save your changes and exit the Survey Flow window.

Your survey will now require respondents to authenticate with CAS before completing the survey and will collect information about them.

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Set up Shibboleth authentication

Shibboleth can collector more information from respondents, including username, first and last name and email address. These attributes are collected as embedded data.

  1. In Qualtrics, open your project.
  2. Click Survey -> Survey Flow from the menu.
  3. Click Add New Element Here.
  4. Click to add Authenticator. 
  5. Change the Authentication Type to SSO.
  6. Check the box for Capture respondent identifying info.
  7. Set SSO Type to Shibboleth. 
  8. Under Capture respondent identifying info, click Add Embedded Data...
  9. Add the following attributes as desired. Click the plus button to add more attributes.
    • Username=uid
    • Firstname=givenName
    • Lastname=sn
    • Email=mail
      Illustration for what needs to be captured and the SSO Type
  10. Click Move and drag your block to the top of the survey flow.
  11. Configure Show Block: Default Question Block so that it is the child of the Branch on Successful Authentication block. This way, your respondents will be prompted to authenticate before seeing your survey.
  12. Click Add New Element Here as a child block of the Branch on Successful Authentication block.
  13. Select Embedded Data.
    • In the Create New Field or Choose From Dropdown field, enter the variable names as desired:
    • Username
    • Firstname
    • Lastname
    • Email
      Illustration for setting the imbedded data
  14. To see the collected attributes from a survey, click Tools > Choose Columns > Embedded Data. Select the associate column names (Username, Firstname, Lastname or Email).
    Illustration for viewing the collected attributes from a survey
  15. Click Save Flow to save your changes and exit the Survey Flow window.

Your survey will now require respondents to authenticate with Shibboleth before completing the survey and will collect information about them.

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