This section describes all of the possible options on the Import Data tab in Data Manager (shown below):
The data import data file must be a tab-delimited text file where the first line of the file contains variable names delimited by tabs that correspond to the survey variable names. Subsequent lines in the data file correspond to a survey participant entry or submission.
Tab-delimited text files created by Microsoft Excel are also supported, which includes triple-quoted data values. Triple-quoted data values are created by Excel whenever a data value in a cell contains one or more double quote characters. Whenever this type of data is included in a spreadsheet and the spreadsheet is saved as a tab-delimited text file, the values are written out with a leading and trailing double quote character and each double quote character in the original value is converted to two double quote characters.
For example, the phrase “Hello” will actually be written out as “””Hello”””.
The data import actions control how the data is imported or if it is at all.
This option may be desirable if the survey contains questions or collections with Show-If. When this option is enabled responses will be discarded if Show-If would have caused this question or parent collection to not be shown.
Data Import will only import data if there are no reported errors. These options allow for users to quickly suppress errors of a certain category especially if the error conditions are determined to be intentional or benign.
The Data Import is performed using the Data Manager. Below are some simple steps designed to help guide the Data Import process.
NOTE: that undoing this operation is a very time intensive process and requires a user to manually delete each submission. It is recommended to import the data as test data first as outlined in the previous step.
NOTE: Survey data for Data Import must be specified as a tab-delimited text file with the variable names as the first row of the file.
NOTE: Data Import must be enabled for each user that will be using the feature.
* If the Import Data tab is not visible see the system administrator. This might be due to the fact that the Data Import feature has not been purchased, or Data Import hasn’t been enabled in the Illume license, or Data Import hasn’t been enabled for the user currently logged in.
Values for the following list of DatStat Internal variables are set by both the Data Import and Remote Data Collection components.
DATSTAT.UPLOADDATETIME
Values for this variable indicate the date and time this survey session was imported. This variable is also set when data has been uploaded using Remote Data Collection.
DATSTAT.UPLOADTYPE
Possible values for this variable are “1 – Remote Data Collection” and “2 – Imported”. Data Import will set this variable to a value of 2.
DATSTAT.UPLOADUSER
This variable will be set to the user name of the user that performed the data import for each survey session. This variable is also set when data has been uploaded using Remote Data Collection.
It is possible to import data into the most of the internal DatStat survey variables. However, the following list of internal variables is not supported. There is no harm in including these variables in the data file, but they will be ignored without any errors being reported.
The final value for this variable in the imported survey session will ALWAYS be different than the value specified in the data file. The purpose of specifying this column is so the same participant can be stamped in the newly created imported survey session as the previous session identified by this value.
In general it is a good idea to include this column in the data import data file if the data being imported was downloaded from a survey in the SAME DatStat Illume system. This column is ignored and a new value will be provided if importing data that originated from a different DatStat Illume system or a survey system other than DatStat Illume.
This participant value isn’t exposed via the Data Manager, but it is used to retrieve the survey session of a participant when a participant is resuming a survey or when the system needs to determine if the participant already took the survey. This information is also used when determining whether to send an email to a participant based on the criteria set in the email job.