How do I import participants?

If you have more than a handful of participants, importing them via Excel is the best option. Just follow the steps below.

1) Download Excel template

Download the Excel template. By using this template you make sure that the file contains the necessary information and is formatted correctly.

2) Enter your data

The first step is to obtain a list containing the relevant participant information. For most companies, such a list can be exported from the HR database. The easiest way is to send the template to somebody who can make exports from the HR database and ask them to fill it out for you.

Good to know:

  • Only the fields First name, Last name, and E-mail are mandatory. All other fields are optional. Using them will give you more possibilities when working with Pulse (see below for details).
  • You can make changes to your participant list later directly in Pulse (e.g. correct errors, assign people to other teams etc.)

Here is an example list. See below for details on the different fields.

Illustration of an example list

First name and Last name

Participant names are used throughout Pulse, for instance in the e-mails and the results dashboard. If you happen to have several participants with the same name, make sure that you use different e-mail addresses for them (which is probably the case at your company) and – if using this field – different participant numbers.

E-mail

Make sure that each e-mail address is only listed once. E-mail addresses should also not contain special characters (e.g., ö, ä, ç). Pulse can handle them but most systems can’t. If you have an e-mail address with a special character this is likely to be a mistake.

Participant number (optional)

Participant number is a number that is unique for each participant (e.g., employee number). This allows you to preserve participants‘ history even if they change their name or e-mail address (e.g. when getting married). In other words, participants can still see all of their teammates’ comments with names and photos that have been submitted before they changed their names or e-mail address. This number should not change for a particular user. You can also use text or a combination of numbers and text.

Team (optional)

Assigning participants to teams has two benefits:

  1. The results can be shown for each team (in addition to the overall results).
  2. The comments are shown with name and photo only to team members and in an anonymous form to everyone else.

You can also create a hierarchy of teams. This allows you to represent your company’s hierarchy in Pulse. To do this, list all the teams the participant belongs to. Start with the highest hierarchy level and separate the teams with “>” (e.g., Sales > Support > Team Lausanne).

Illustration of a classical hierarchy with the corresponding example entries for the team field

Participants who are not assigned to a specific team will be placed at the company level (i.e., the highest hierarchy level). One example is the CEO who typically is not part of a team.

Good to know: A participant can also belong to more than one team. In this case, add all of the participant’s teams in the same cell, separated by && (Team 1 && Team 2 etc.).

Language (optional)

If you assign a language to your participants, the system is automatically shown in the right language (including e-mails).

Please use the following language codes:

  • English = EN
  • German = DE
  • French = FR
  • Italian = IT

If no language is provided, the standard language will be used. This language is set by the admin. Users can change the language directly in Pulse. This change overrides the languages assigned in the participant list.

3) Upload database

In the Admin section of Pulse, navigate to Participants and then click on Add participants. Choose the option Import with Excel and follow the instructions.

4) Review database (optional)

To make sure that your participant database is correct, you can download a team overview. This contains a list of all teams and their members. In the admin section of Pulse, navigate to Participants and click on the download icon in the header of the participant table. Select Team overview from the drop-down.