Census File Specs & Requirements

Before you create your employee census file, make sure to review the below specs and requirements for a successful import. If you have any questions when building your census file, reach out to your People Element contact or Support.

Required Column

Employee ID is a required field used to identify participants and must be unique to each participant. This column is used by the platform to identify new participants from current participants so that demographics may be updated for current participants and new participants added to the platform. Without this column, your census fill will not import.

Phone Data Collection Required Columns

If you have phone data collection for one or more surveys, you must provide the below information for calling to be available and successful.

• First Name and Last Name

  Names are important so that our data collection team knows who to ask for when calling your employees.

• Phone
  Phone numbers must be included for our data collection team to be able to reach out to your employees.
• State

  If state is not included, survey participants will not go into the call queue for our data collection team to reach out via phone.

• Country
  If this column is not included in your census file, it will default to USA for all participants. If you include this column in your file, make sure the format is one of the below. Without country in one of the following formats, the survey participants will not go into the call queue for our data collection team to reach out via phone. (USA, US, United States, United States of America)

Highly Suggested Columns

• First Name and Last Name
  Names will populate in the survey notifications and survey for each participant when running confidential surveys.
• Email
  To send survey notifications via email, email addresses need to be included in your census file. We recommend sending both work and personal email addresses.
• Phone
  To send survey notifications via SMS, mobile phone numbers need to be included in your file and connected to the Phone demographic.
• Birth Date, Hire Date, & Term Date
  Ensure dates include four-digit year (mm/dd/yyyy)
• All other demographics you would like to report data by (job title, department, supervisor, etc.). It is better to have more demographics and not use them all than to add demographics later.

All column headers in your census file must match the corresponding demographic custom names in the platform exactly (e.g. “Employee ID” = “Employee ID”). You must have a demographic created in the platform for data to import from your file. To learn more about creating demographics, review this article.

The top row of your worksheet must be your column headers (i.e. no hidden or extra rows).

All demographic items are case sensitive. If they are in the import file in multiple formats, they will populate in reporting in multiple formats. Example: Sales and sales will show as two different departments in reporting, they are not combined into one.

The "active status" demographic listed in the default demographics group of the demographics page is to be used by the platform to mark survey participants as active or inactive. Active means they can be assigned to and complete a survey while inactive means they are unable to be assigned to or complete a survey. This is not employee status (term vs. active). If you wish to have an employee status demographic, you will need to create a custom demographic in the "other demographics" section.

File Specs

• Duplicate flag: Employee ID
• Dates must be in the format of mm/dd/yyyy
• There is no size or field character limit.
• No merged cells.
• No formulas.
• Remove any additional worksheets in your file.
• To import into the platform the file must be an Excel Worksheet file type .xlsx or .csv (comma separated only).
• To import via an FTP or SFTP automation, file types can be .xlsx, .xls, or .csv (comma separated only).
• File naming convention should be different for each import - we recommend using dates in your file name.
• No special characters within the file names.
• Password protected and encrypted files are not accepted. The platform will accept the following protected file types: always open in read-only, protect the current sheet, protect workbook structure, add a digital signature, mark as final.