This procedure can be triggered from two different screens:
- from the Distribution screen: after clicking the Local Sample button in this screen, the Create a new sample screen will be displayed.
- from the Samples screen: after clicking on the green Create new sample button (top right), the Create a new sample screen will be displayed.
This screen shows the second stage for creating a new local sample.
This screen allows you to select the Excel file containing the sample data to be imported.
Please read the instructions carefully before importing an Excel file. The instructions include some useful hints. Each sample consists of 7 system fields and a large number of custom member variables. The latter number depends on the type of user licence which has been assigned to the user.
- An Essential user can import up to a maximum of 15 columns with custom member variables.
- A Professional user can import 100 columns with custom member variables.
The system variables which are always part of a sample, are:
- Email
This column must be present in the Excel file, otherwise no e-mail will be sent to the corresponding sample member. - First Name
- Last Name
- Language
This column is only relevant for multilingual surveys, it specified the language in which the survey is displayed to the corresponding sample member. Only language codes of our supported list can be used, see available language codes - Gender
- Cell Phone Number
It is an integer (data type), so leading zeroes are automatically truncated. However, the telephone number may not begin with a + or have gaps between the digits. Moreover, this field may not include text or characters such as ; or :.
Please always include the country code, because the person sending the survey via SMS does not necessarily have to be from the same country as the person conducting the survey.
- Code
If sample members access a survey using an invitation code, this implies that the Enable code access setting has been checked (see the Build screen). In this case, all sample members must be assigned a unique value in this column. Furthermore, this code must be unique within the entire workspace.
Note: When importing/uploading, there should not be an ID column in the Excel file, as the ID is automatically assigned to each sample member in Survalyzer.
Custom member variables are additional variables you have created, e.g. Function, Department.
Uploading Excel file
To do this, you can click in the grey box with the text Drop Excel file (.xlsx) here or click to upload. You can then select the required file containing the sample data from any location on your PC. Once you have done this, this file is positioned to the right of the grey box (see the red-bordered area in the figure above). Under the name of this Excel file you will find the status Uploaded in small letters.
When you have uploaded the Excel file, you can click the Next button at the bottom right to switch to the Import settings screen.
This screen shows the third stage for creating a new local sample.
On this screen, you will generally select the setting Import only records with unique e-mail addresses and unique phone numbers. In this case, only the data of sample members with a unique e-mail address and phone number will be imported from the selected Excel file. If a certain e-mail address is found twice in this file, only the data of the first sample member with this e-mail address will be imported.
You will select the setting Import all records and allow duplicate e-mail addresses as well as duplicate phone numbers, if you want to import the data of sample members with an identical e-mail address as well. You will do this, for example, when you want to test a survey that is written in multiple languages. You can then include a particular sample member in the Excel file a number of times with the same e-mail address, but with a different language code.
After this, you can click the Next button at the bottom right to switch to the Review screen.
This screen shows the fourth stage for creating a new local sample.
This screen displays the import process in the background. You now have two options at your disposal:
- Option 1: You can wait until the import of the Excel file has been completed. We recommend doing this, if the file to be imported contains less than 2,000 rows. This process is generally completed within 1 minute. You will then receive the following screen, which shows, among other things, the data of the sample members that have been successfully imported.
After this review, you can click the Finish button at the bottom right to permanently create the local sample on the Edit member screen (Samples). When you successively return to the distribution overview via the sample overview, you will notice that the local sample has been added in the format of a tile (see figure below).
- Option 2: You can also close this screen by clicking the Finish button to go directly to the Edit member screen (Samples) where the import process will be executed. Once the local sample has been created, you can view the import statistics at the bottom right of the Edit member screen, see the red framed part in the following figure.
If you then click the < button (see purple arrow) to return to the distribution overview via the sample overview, you will notice that the local sample has been added in the format of a tile.