Recently we have seen the number of EHQ admins bulk importing participants into their site increasing. We refer to a ‘bulk import’ when admins create accounts on behalf of their participants, as opposed to participants registering on their own. To create accounts for your community, all you need is a valid email address of the person to be uploaded.
The reasons behind these recent uploads were diverse. Some admins wanted to increase the uptake of EHQ within their organisation and hence created accounts for their colleagues. Others had collected email addresses during a community event in an effort to build their EHQ database. In another case, we saw an upload triggered by the need to set up a protected project for a selected few members of the community. Whatever the reasons were, in all cases there was prior communication and it was ensured people who had an account created for them, were aware they would become part of the site. This is important, because you do not want to upload participants without their prior consent.
Uploading participants is easy enough technically, but from a best practice point of view it can be a bit more tricky. Here is a list of things to be mindful of when you set up accounts for your participants, ie use the ‘bulk import’ function.
- Only create accounts for email addresses for which you know the owner has given his/her consent
- When you create accounts for people, they will still have to fill in the registration survey. You can NOT fill in the demographic information on behalf of the participants
- Testing with a colleague or your private email first, can help you understand the process an ‘imported’ participants goes through
- Consider doing the upload in stages. This will make it easier to react to feedback you might get after the upload has occurred
- You need to associate a screen name to every email address. Participants will be able to change that screen name later
- You cannot create accounts for email addresses that are already in use on your site (either as a participant or an admin account)
- Configure the automatically generated email that goes out after the import has occurred
If you feel unsure about the bulk import process, please feel free to contact us for support.
