Adding Custom Participant Properties via Flat File

 

When a participant list has custom properties, users have two options for creation of those properties:

1. Prior to uploading participants, built out each custom participant property on the participant list.  The advantage of doing so is that by building out each property and its attributes, you can be assured that when participants are uploaded, that the participant information in that upload file meets the requirements of the properties you created.  For example, your custom participant property may have a scale of 1=male, 2=female.  When you upload your participant list, you may have an erroneous “3” in the list.  By creating your property in advance of the flat file upload, you can ensure that the enterprise manager will catch this error and flag it during the upload.
2. The second option is to simply add the custom properties to your participant list flat file without creating them in advance.  This is a faster method, in that there is no effort involved other than adding the columns to your flat file.  When you upload that file, the Enterprise Manager will automatically create those custom properties.  The disadvantage to this method is that when your custom properties are created, they are created with a data type of text, and display type of text box.  Given this, the columns could contain all kinds of erroneous data, but all data in the column will be accepted without any rule/validation enforcement.

Uploading into a Master List

1. Create a Tab-Delimited text file that has the Custom Properties as the Column Headers
2. On the left pane of the Enterprise Manager select Participant Lists
3. On the right pane find your participant list, and click View Participants
4. From the Take Action menu select “Import Participants”
5. Browse for your file and select it.
6. Select an import option, e.g. “Add participants that do not already exist”
7. Check the “Create participant list properties that do not exist” check box.  It is this text box that tells the Enterprise Manager that you want it to create a custom property for any property “that does not exist”, i.e. that is not already a built-in property.
8. Click Save and OK
9. Go into each property and modify the Data Type and Display Type if desired

NOTE: These Properties can now be inherited by Derived List

Uploading into a Derived List

To upload Custom Properties into a Derived List follow the same steps as uploading to a Master List.

Keep the following in mind:

• If the Property does not exist in the Master List it will be added to only to the Derived List
• If the Property is in the Master but Disabled in the Derived List, it will now be Enabled in the Derived List