mEMA by ilumivu

Schedule Blackout Dates

The Schedule Blackout Dates feature allows you to block access to a survey—or all surveys—for a specific group of participants on a designated date. Even if a survey is scheduled to run on that day, participants won’t be able to access it.

This feature lets you "pause" survey-taking without modifying the participant schedule.

Use case example:
If your survey includes an intervention that requires a staff member's involvement and that person is unavailable, you can use a blackout date to temporarily block access to the survey.

How to Create a Blackout Date

1 Open the mEMA dropdown menu and select “Schedule Blackout Dates.”

2 Click the “Add Blackout Date” button.

3 Select the group you want to assign the blackout date to.
Note: This will affect all participants in that group.

4 Select the survey you want to block.

- You can also choose “All Surveys” to block access to all scheduled surveys for that day.

5 Pick the blackout date.

6 Add a custom message that participants will see if they try to access the survey during the blackout.

• Optional: If left blank, the default message shown will be:
  “Assessment is not available today. Please tap OK to continue.”

7 Add a short internal description for your team to track the reason for the blackout.

• Note: This will not be visible to participants.

8 Click “Submit.”

9 Participants must download the update for the blackout date to take effect. Once downloaded, any attempt to access the survey will show the message set in Step 6.

• ⚠️ Blackout dates are detected by the update checker. Even if you don’t notify participants, they’ll be prompted to download updates within 1 hour of the blackout date being created.