Importing study data

Transcript:

  •  Castor allows to import a CSV file with your data
  • Before you can import a CSV file, make sure you have ‘Edit’ rights for the record
  • The variable names that you are planning to import must exist in the study
  • The values should correspond to all validation rules defined in the study
  • Date fields must be in the plain text and correspond to dd-mm-yyyy format
  • Currently it is only possible to import ASCII characters
  • For performance reasons imports cannot contain more than 25000 data points, rows multiplied by columns
  • If you need to import files containing more data points, you can either split the dataset into several files or import data using API
  • Keep in mind that importing data will overwrite existing data
  • Make sure you are only importing data for empty fields, or data you wish to overwrite. 
  • Always use the single record import function when possible
  • This helps to reduce the risk of accidentally importing data for the wrong record
  • First you need to prepare the CSV document
  • The data should be organized horizontally
  • Make sure the record id and the institute abbreviation are located in one of the first five columns, A-E
  • It is possible to add an email address as well if you would like to link a record with a certain email address
  • Following the record id an institute, add the variables and data values
  • If you are importing data for option groups, such as checkboxes, radio buttons or dropdowns, you need to keep in mind certain formatting rules
  • Since checkboxes allow to select multiple answers, each answer option should be in a separate column indicating a variable name and the option separated by hash sign
  • What you can also do is just export the checkbox field and use this as an example of how the checkbox field should be formatted
  • For  radio buttons and dropdowns, enter a value that corresponds to the option value that should be selected.
  • To import data for multiple records, click on the Import icon
  • Choose the file
  • For study data, select the ‘Study import’ option in the ‘Import type’ field
  • In the ‘Record id column’ field, define the column from your CSV file which contains Record id
  • In my document this is column A
  • If you are adding the data to existing records, the option ‘Create records that do not exist’ should be set to ‘No’
  • To import email addresses set the respective option to Yes
  • Click ‘Upload’ button to import your data
  • The results are displayed in a popup window and, in case of failure, the reason is explained.
  • The import option also allows to create records on the fly
  • This can be useful if you would like to create several records at once
  • In my study, I will create two new records
  • To do this, clicking the ‘Import’ button, and in the pop-up window set the option ‘Create records that do not exist’ to ‘Yes’
  • You will see the field ‘Institute abbreviation column’ appear where you can define the column in your CSV document which stores the institute abbreviation
  • Click the ‘Upload’ button
  • New records are successfully created
  • When the data is imported, the progress of the records remains 0%
  • When you open a record, the progress will be re-calculated automatically 
  • If the study contains calculations, when the data is imported, the calculations will not be triggered 
  • To trigger the calculations, just open a record and a step which contains calculations
  • Then the calculations will automatically executed

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