AI Summary 
The contacts list (also called contacts DB) is the list of all the respondents and potential respondents to the survey.
You can import a contacts list by uploading a file in Excel format.
Each row represents a contact and each column is a contact field.
You don’t have to revise the column headers of your Excel file in order to upload the list on IdSurvey. The import guided procedure will allow you to easily associate the columns of the Excel file to the standard fields and custom fields already present in the survey or to create new ones.
In order to upload contacts go to the “Contacts Management” page from the survey settings. Click on the “Options” button on the top left of the page and then on “Import”.
Step 1 #
Select the Excel file that you want to upload and click on the button “Insert”.
Step 2 #
Now IdSurvey will ask you to select the sheet of the Excel file that you want to import.
Note
- If the file that you are importing only contains one spreadsheet, the sheet will be automatically selected and you will move on to the following step.
Step 3 #
Here you will be asked to associate the Excel columns to the IdSurvey fields.
The system will automatically associate the column headers of the existing fields when the names are corresponding.
Only the columns that will not get automatically recognized and for which an action is required will be displayed in red. For each column that was not recognized you can choose between: associating it to an existing field by choosing it from the dropdown menu, creating a new column or ignoring the column so that it will be excluded from the export (displayed in grey).
When all the columns have been recognized you can move on to the next step.
Notes
- By clicking on “Create new fields automatically” all the columns not yet recognized will be set on “New column”, creating a new field for each column.
- The name of the fields cannot contain blank spaces of special characters except for the _ (underscore). IdSurvey will automatically convert each character that was not accepted in underscore.
- The software will save the associations between columns and custom fields of the survey for the following imports. Should you need to import multiple Excel files with the same column headers, these will be automatically recognized. You can manually edit the “Label import” from the “Manage custom fields” section.
- According to the methodology you are distributing the survey with, some of the standard fields will be necessary for the correct functioning of IdSurvey, such as the fields for telephone numbers or email address etc. Please check the table below for further details.
- Some of the standard fields have preset formats and cannot be edited. For example, the “date of birth” field only accepts dates in the yyyy-mm-dd format and the “number of employees” field only accepts whole numbers. See the Standard Fields list for more details.
- All standard fields can contain only a certain number of characters (usually 255, with some exceptions described in the table below). Trying to upload data with more characters than the standard field limitation will result in an error that prevents those data from being uploaded.
- All custom fields have a much higher character limitation (over 65.000 characters). Should you need to upload data with more than 255 characters, you need to use custom fields. You can create new custom fields either in step 3 of the contact upload, or from the Contact Fields Management section.
Step 4 #
Associate your contacts to the CATI, CAWI, CAPI methodologies that you plan to use for your project.
Click on “Insert data” to complete the uploading process. 
Note
- You can change this setting afterwards from the “Options” button of the “Contacts Management” page or from the page of each individual contact.
Standard fields list #
| DB field name | Label | Format | Notes |
| Identification | Identification | 255 characters | To use as default primary key |
| Name | Name | 255 characters | If populated it is displayed in the CATI interface If populated it is displayed in the CAPI interface If populated it is displayed in the admin contacts list |
| Surname | Surname | 255 characters | If populated it is displayed in the CATI interface If populated it is displayed in the CAPI interface If populated it is displayed in the admin contacts list |
| Username | Username | 255 characters | Used for CAWI interviews authenticated via login |
| Password | Password | 50 characters | Used for CAWI interviews authenticated via login |
| 255 characters | Used for email sender | ||
| PhoneNumber | PhoneNumber | 255 characters | Used as phone number for CATI If populated it is displayed in the admin contacts list |
| OtherPhoneNumber | OtherPhone | 50 characters | Used as phone number for CATI |
| Mobile | Mobile | 50 characters | Used as phone number for CATI Used for SMS Sender |
| NewPhone | NewPhone | 255 characters | Used as phone number for CATI |
| Address | Address | 255 characters | |
| ZIPCode | Postcode | 10 characters | |
| City | City | 255 characters | |
| CityCode | CityCode | 50 characters | |
| Province | Province | 50 characters | |
| Birthdate | DateOfBirth | 255 characters | |
| Gender | Gender | 50 characters | |
| Zone | Zone | 50 characters | |
| ZoneName | ZoneName | 255 characters | |
| Company | Company | 255 characters | If populated it is displayed in the CATI interface If populated it is displayed in the admin contacts list |
| Area | Area | 255 characters | |
| NumberOfEmployees | NumberOfEmployees | 255 characters | |
| VAT | VATNumber | 50 characters | |
| Occupation | Profession | 255 characters | |
| Qualification | Qualification | 255 characters | |
| Sample | Sample | 50 characters | Necessary for the backup Sample feature |
| Family | Family | 50 characters | Necessary for the backup Sample feature |
| Field1 | Field1 | 255 characters | |
| Field2 | Field2 | 255 characters | |
| Field3 | Field3 | 255 characters | |
| Field4 | Field4 | 255 characters | |
| Field5 | Field5 | 255 characters | |
| Field6 | Field6 | 255 characters | |
| Field7 | Field7 | 255 characters | |
| Field8 | Field8 | 255 characters | |
| Field9 | Field9 | 255 characters | |
| Field10 | Field10 | 255 characters | |
| Field11 | Field11 | 255 characters | |
| Field12 | Field12 | 255 characters | |
| Field13 | Field13 | 255 characters | |
| Field14 | Field14 | 255 characters | |
| Field15 | Field15 | over 65000 characters | |
| Field16 | Field16 | 255 characters | |
| CapiOperator | CAPIinterviewer | 255 characters | Default field used for the distributions of contacts to CAPI interviewers |
| UTC | UTC | Numerical decimal 53 characters | Reserved for calculating the time zone of the contact compared to the server time zone |
| lang | Language | 255 characters | Used for multilingual surveys. It stores the ISO code of the contact language, |
| priority | Priority | Integer | Used for CATI surveys. It allows you to change the priority of the contact extraction over others. A lower value corresponds to a higher priority. |
