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Adding & Removing Participants (EX)

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Qtip: This page describes functionality available to Engagement, Lifecycle, and Ad Hoc Employee Research projects, although Lifecycle and Ad Hoc Employee Research projects do not have hierarchies. For more details on each, see Types of Employee Experience Projects.

About Adding & Removing Participants

You can add participants for your Employee Engagement or Lifecycle project in the Participants section of the Participants tab. You can add these participants in large batches with a CSV/TSV made in Excel, or you can manually enter in information for just a few at a time. During this process, you can also include additional information called metadata for your participants that will later help you build hierarchies (EE) and organize data on your dashboards.

Qtip: There are two more options that may appear under your Add Participants button, depending on the type of project you have created.

  1. If you are editing an Employee Engagement project, you also have the option of importing participants from the global directory.
  2. If you are editing a Lifecycle project, you also have the option of setting up a participant import automation.

Manually Adding Participants

  1. Navigate to the Participants section of the Participants tab.
    On the Participants tab, Add Participants button drops down to reveal Manually Add Participants
  2. Click Add participants on the top-right.
  3. Select Manually add participants.
  4. Use the search bar to find users already uploaded into your employee directory. Select the user to add them to the list.
    Add Participants window with search bar

    Qtip: If your license has SSO, make sure you upload your participants to the directory with their usernames before you upload participants! Once they’re in the directory, you can upload participants and exclude their usernames, so long as you have their unique identifiers.
  5. Enter information for the participants you want to upload in the Unique identifier, Email, First name, and Last name fields.
    Spreadsheet where you can manually enter participants in the Add Participants window
  6. Click Add metadata for each additional metadata field you’d like to add to the participant. For example, this can be useful for adding the participant’s language or the location where they work.
    Qtip: You’re allowed to add as many metadata as you want, and you can make the titles to whatever you want. Note that a Language field can only be called Language.
  7. Click Add participant when you’re done adding details.
  8. Repeat steps 4-7 for each participant you want to add.
    Save button on the bottom-right of the Add Participants window
  9. When you’re finished entering participants, click Save.
Qtip: Metadata edits made in the Employee Directory only apply to the directory; metadata edits made to the project only apply to the project. The only exception is if edits are made to UserName or Unique Identifier – this information will be updated across the platform.

Importing Engagement & Lifecycle Participants

This section only regards Engagement and Lifecycle projects. Although similar in setup, this section does not apply to Ad Hoc Employee Research.

Qtip: If your license has SSO, make sure you upload your participants to the directory with their UserName before you upload participants! Once they’re in the directory, you can upload participants and exclude the UserName column, so long as you have their unique identifiers.
  1. Navigate to the Participants section of the Participants tab.
    Add participants menu of Participants tab
  2. Click Add Participants on the top-right.
  3. Select Import Participants.
  4. Download the example CSV or TSV file. These are both spreadsheet files that can be opened in Excel and other similar programs.
    Import participants window, with csv and tsv templates, then a button for uploading a file

    Qtip: We recommend the TSV file if any of your fields, such as names of participants, contain characters other than numbers or the English alphabet.
    Attention: If you use comma delimiters to separate multiple values in a metadata field, you will not be able to use Participation Summary Widgets that filter by that field.
  5. Add participants to your spreadsheet, with one row for each participant (each participant must have an entry in the UniqueIdentifier, Email, FirstName, and LastName  columns, though other columns may have blank cells). See our Preparing Your Participant File for Import support page for more information on what information to include in order to build hierarchies.
    CSV file with example participants

    Qtip: The participant username will by default be the same value in the Email column. If you’d like to specify a different username for your participants, add a column titled UserName and specify a username. This username is what your participants will use to login to view dashboards.
  6. Save the file as a UTF-8 encoded CSV (Comma Separated Values) or TSV (Tab Separated Values).
    Qtip: The maximum file size for a contact list upload is 100 MB.
  7. Click Select a file to browse your files.
    Blue select a file text center of screen beneath an upload symbol of an upward arrow
  8. If the importer detects initial issues, it will not let you proceed, and will list issues in red. Read these descriptions and make corrections to your file. After you’ve saved the changes, click Select a different file and re-upload the file.
    Possible error appears as a box in red below the upload / browse buttons. Explains briefly that there are duplicated headers. Check for errors button stays gray and is not clickable
  9. If no issues are detected, click Check for Errors.
    File has no errors - message in green stating as such, "check for errors" button becomes blue and is clickable
  10. While the importer is loading, you can return to your participant list.
    Window showing a loading page
  11. When loaded, the importer will summarize what participants will be updated or added to the project, and what impact this will have on your directory, too. The importer will also warn you if there are any errors in your rows.
    Message appears showing how many people were added or updated
  12. If you are happy with these changes, click Finalize import.
  13. You will be shown the status of your recent imports / exports.
    List of recent imports

Errors Detected

Qtip: The error checker and error report are only available if your brand uses unique identifiers.

If you allow the importer to check for errors and some are detected, you will be given an error report you can download as a CSV, in case you have a large file that necessitates a large report.

Red error warning message. Link to download errors

Click Download Error Report to view this.

The report will give the exact row of the file that had the error, the field that had the issue, and the unique identifier of the participant who had the errors.

Example: We accidentally uploaded our user with the unique identifier “bp3835453” twice. Both the unique identifier and email address are the exact same on each of the two rows. If we erase one of the rows, the issue will be resolved when we go back to upload the file.

CSV of error messages and rows afflicted

CSV of participants that was uploaded and caused the errors

Qtip: The person importer does not detect hierarchy-specific issues.

Common Errors to Watch Out For

Although this is not an exhaustive list, here are some general tips for building your file to help you avoid issues uploading participants:

  • Make sure the first row of the file has UniqueIdentifier, First Name, Last Name, and Email.
  • Your file headers should not contain any special characters – this includes characters that are not numbers or the English alphabet.
    Qtip: This rule only applies to headers, not column values.
  • Headers cannot exceed 100 characters.
  • Your file headers should not use terms from existing Qualtrics fields:
    • SID
    • RID
    • Auditable
    • EndDate
    • RecordedDate
    • StartDate
    • Status
    • Points
  • Be careful not to include duplicates of the same row – no two participants should have the same unique identifier or email.
  • The file should not have more than 200 header fields.
  • The file should not have more headers than columns.
  • Make sure column values do not exceed 1000 characters.

Importing Ad Hoc Employee Research Participants

This section only regards Ad Hoc Employee Research projects. Although similar in setup, this section does not apply to Engagement or Lifecycle projects.

  1. Create a spreadsheet in Excel or another spreadsheet program. See our Preparing Your Participant File for Import support page for more information on what information to include.
    Qtip: Check out an example CSV by clicking on the Example CSV link. If you decide not to use the example document to upload people to your project, make sure the Unique Identifier, Email, FirstName, LastName, and Language fields have the correct spelling and capitalization.
    Example CSV link on the Import Participants window
  2. Add participants to your spreadsheet, with one row for each participant (each participant must have an entry in the Unique Identifier, Email, FirstName, and LastName  columns, though other columns may have blank cells).
    Qtip: If your license has SSO, make sure you upload your participants to the directory with their usernames before you upload participants! Once they’re in the directory, you can upload participants and exclude their usernames, so long as you have their unique identifiers.
    Qtip: The participant username will by default be the same value in the Email column. If you’d like to specify a different username for your participants, add a column titled UserName and specify a username. This username is what your participants will use to login to view dashboards.
  3. Save the file as a CSV (Comma Separated Values) or TSV (Tab Separated Values). Note that the maximum file size for a contact list upload is 100 MB.
  4. Navigate to the Participants section of the Participants tab.
    On the Participants tab, Add Participants button drops down to reveal Import Participants
  5. Click Add Participants on the top-right.
  6. Select Import Participants.
  7. Click Browse and select your file.
    Import participants window

    Qtip: Make sure you have the correct delimiter selected. Click the blue More Options link and choose a different Delimiter and/or Enclosure. CSVs tend to have a comma delimiter, whereas TSV tend to have tab. For further troubleshooting techniques, visit the CSV/TSV Upload Issues support page.
    Delimiter set to comma and Enclosure set to quotation marks
  8. Click Import.

Updating Participants

Let’s say you already uploaded your participants, but realize you forgot to include some metadata. Maybe you accidentally uploaded the wrong values for your hierarchy, or you just want to add the location of each participant so you can add the option for your participants to filter their dashboard by the country their office is in. The good news is that you can upload another CSV/TSV file to update this metadata, so long as you follow the steps below.

Importing an Updated File

Follow the instructions on the Importing Participants section of this page to learn where to get an example file, and then upload it to your employee project. Remember to always include a Unique Identifier column so Qualtrics knows which participants to update. You may exclude participants and metadata columns you don’t want to change.

Qtip: This method can be used to edit, add, and remove metadata values. Uploading a file with empty values for a metadata field will erase participants’ current metadata values. (For example, this can help in instances where you may’ve accidentally assigned too many level hierarchy columns to a participant and need to remove a few. By including these columns but leaving values blank, you indicate these levels are empty.) The importer will not skip any columns you include in the import, even if all the participants have a blank value for it.
Attention: The hierarchy will only update when you import a file containing every metadata in your hierarchy. For example, if you used Unique Identifier, Manager ID, Org Unit ID, and Org Unit Description to build your hierarchy, all 4 of these columns will need to be present in an import to trigger a change in your hierarchy. You will not need metadata unrelated to the hierarchy, such as Age or Tenure.

Qtip: If a participant is updated with a new value for Email, their username will also be updated to match the new email address. This will happen unless one of the following is true:

  1. The participant’s username has been specified in a separate column titled UserName.
  2. The participant’s username has been manually changed in the participant information window, Employee Directory, or Admin tab so that it no longer matches the email address.

Pushing Metadata Updates to Responses and Dashboards

If you have made changes to your participants’ information by importing new metadata or through the participant information window, you will want to make sure these updates are reflected in your dashboards and with your responses. There are several ways to update participant metadata, depending on the level of edits you have made:

You can update participants one at a time in the Participants tab, using the dropdown to the right of their name.
Dropdown far-right of participant in the participant tab

If you have updated only a few participants, you can update metadata by selecting people you want to update, clicking Bulk actions, then selecting Update responses with current metadata.
Dropdown arrow by Bulk Actions box allows you to Update (selected) Response with Current Metadata

If you made many changes to many participants, you can update all metadata under Tools.
On the Participants tab, Tools button drops down to reveal Update All Responses with Current Metadata option

Warning: Changes made to a participant’s metadata in a project will not reflect in the employee directory, nor will it change the participant’s metadata in historical projects. Metadata changes are specific to the project in which the change is made.

Metadata

Warning: All metadata fields previously recognized spacing in the field names. For a vast majority of users, metadata field names now ignore spaces, meaning “Manager ID” and “ManagerID” would be treated as the same field when importing a participant file.
Warning: Do not name any of your metadata fields the same name as a reserved embedded data field. These fields are not case-sensitive.

When adding participants, your file must contain metadata. Metadata are variables containing information about your participants, such as employee identification number, role in the company, or start date. Metadata can be used to create your hierarchy in Employee Engagement or to filter data in your dashboards in both Employee Lifecycle and Engagement.

Qtip: Forgot to upload certain metadata before data collection? Check out our section on Updating Participants.

In an imported file, metadata is represented as a column of data. The header becomes the name of the variable in Qualtrics.

Department, Employee ID, and Location columns in a participants Excel file

Example: Employee ID and Manager ID are metadata used in building parent-child hierarchies (EE). Let’s say that at my company, my employee number is 831 and my manager’s employee number is 909. When adding myself as a participant, my Employee ID column would say 831 and my Manager ID column would say 909.
Example: In your Employee Engagement or Lifecycle dashboard, you want to provide comparisons of data from all the different departments against a baseline performance of engagement. When you add your participants, you should include a Department column with each of your employees’ department information so that this information is saved to the project and you can generate these comparisons in your dashboard once the engagement data is collected.
Warning: Avoid using the following characters in metadata field names and values: | & ; $ % : < > { } , * + ‘. You may use / in values for fields such as dates, but you cannot use it in the metadata field name.

Removing Participants

There are a couple different ways to remove participants. One is a manual approach where you select participants and remove them by pages of the Participants tab. The other is a convenient import process where you can upload a list of Unique IDs for the participants you’d like to remove.

Attention: When you remove a participant from a project, you will remove their response data from the project. This means it will no longer be available on corresponding dashboards. Only remove a participant if you are sure you want to lose this data or if you have confirmed that no response was collected.

Manual Removal

  1. If desired, search to narrow down the participants you see.
    Participants selected from list
  2. Select users you’d like to remove.
  3. Click the Bulk actions dropdown.
  4. Select Remove selected participants.
  5. Type “remove.”
    Window remove participants from project opens over the participants tab and has a field for typing "remove"
  6. Click Remove Participant(s).
Qtip: You can only delete users together if they are on the same page of the Participants tab. If you go to the next page, any selections you made on the previous page are deselected.

Bulk Removal Through Import

  1. Make sure you do not have any participants selected.
    Remove participants option from bulk actions menu
  2. Go to Bulk actions.
  3. Select  Remove participants.
  4. Click Download to export a template CSV for import.
    Remove Participants window with browse to left, example CSV to right, remove participants in bottom-right
  5. Enter the corresponding IDs in the Unique Identifier column. Save your file.
    Qtip: If you’re not familiar with your participants’ unique IDs, you may want to export your participants list.
  6. Click Choose file and select the file.
  7. Click Remove participants.

You may remove up to 25,000 participants at one time with this method. If you need to remove more than 25,000 participants, you will need to perform multiple removals.

FAQs