Research Tool · Open Source

QualSched

Qualtrics has no recurring scheduler for ecological momentary assessment. Without one, a coordinator books invitations one at a time — for every participant, for every time slot, for every day of the protocol. QualSched computes the entire plan, shows it to you, and sends it. It is free, open source under the MIT license, and installed by download.

In use
Download QualSched Read the user guide
What it does

The whole protocol, booked in one pass.

Per-participant time zones
Each invitation is computed for the moment it should arrive in that participant's own local time — the detail that makes multi-site and traveling-participant studies painful to schedule by hand.
Review before you send
The full plan is shown with local and UTC times for every invitation, and a readiness badge per participant explaining exactly what is missing when someone cannot be scheduled yet.
Nothing left running
Once sent, Qualtrics holds each invitation until its send time. No server, no scheduled job, and no laptop that has to stay awake for the duration of the study.
Design

Built for the coordinator, not the sysadmin.

QualSched installs without administrator rights on Windows, macOS, and Linux — a deliberate choice, because the person who schedules a study rarely controls the machine they schedule it from. Several Qualtrics accounts can be configured side by side and switched freely, so a coordinator working across institutions does not need separate installations. Studies already running under the earlier command-line tool can import their existing configuration files directly.

API tokens are never written to the settings file; they go into the operating system's own credential store, and every call to Qualtrics is made by the application's Rust core rather than the interface layer. The tool is released under the MIT license because scheduling infrastructure is not where a study should have a dependency it cannot inspect — the scheduling rules, including how daylight-saving transitions and midnight-crossing windows are resolved, are readable and unit-tested in the open.

Status
In use for active studies; replaces the earlier qualtrics_util command-line tool.
Platforms
Windows, macOS, and Linux desktop — no administrator rights required.
Requires
A Qualtrics account with API access, a contact directory, and a message library.
License
MIT — free to use, modify, and redistribute.
Download
Installers for Windows, macOS, and Linux
Documentation
User guide — written for study coordinators; also readable offline inside the app.
Source
github.com/kelvinlim/qualsched

Running an EMA study?

QualSched is free to download and in use for active studies today. If your protocol needs invitations booked across time zones, we would like to hear about it.

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