In Illume surveys, a Quota is a user defined category that is limited by the number of participants that have already submitted the survey. At runtime, the quotas are evaluated for each participant to determine if the participant is part of the quota or if the quota limit has been reached. In addition to the quota limits, a quota can optionally have other criteria which are based on survey questions.
A very simple example of Quota Management is to limit the number of participants that are to take a survey. After the limit has been met, other participants can be immediately auto-submitted and issued a message saying the quota has been met. Criteria can also be added to the quota to form another variation of this example so that the survey is limited by females between the ages of 18 and 30.
A survey can have one or more Quotas and each Quota must be contained within a Quota Group Object. The placement of the Quota Group Object determines when the quotas contained within the object are evaluated. The Quota Group Object is normally placed near the beginning of the survey, usually after a set of screening questions. There are additional rules that apply to all quotas specified in this Quota Group Object that can be optionally specified that affect the quota evaluation and determine whether a participant is assigned to the quota or not.