The data types shown above are those that the UNICOM Intelligence Data Model uses. When the table is created in the sample database, the Activate component converts these data types into the corresponding data types in the database application you are using (For further details about the mapping process, search the documentation for “Data type mapping for columns in sample tables”). You can check the column data types by opening the table in your database application and can change the data types if they are not exactly what you want. See the database application’s documentation for information on changing data types.

Your participants text file does not need to contain information for all the required columns, as many of the columns are used only internally by the sample management system and will only contain information once a participant has been called. As a minimum, you must supply a value in your text file for the Id column. For telephone interviewing projects, you should provide a value for the PhoneNumber column, and if you have participants in more than one time zone you might want to provide a value for the TimeZone column.

Once you have told Activate which text file to use, it scans the file and decides how it will load the data into the sample table. It does this by comparing the field names in the participants text file with the columns names that need to exist in the sample table. If there are additional fields in the text file, new columns will be created in the sample table to hold this data. The fields table displays a summary of what it will do and lets you change it if this is necessary. Typically, you might change the fields that are used for authenticating inbound callers.

Fields to make available to the sample management script. Cancel any that are not used by the sample management script (you cannot cancel required fields).

Fields whose contents are used only by the interview script become available during interviews and need not be selected here.

Fields to use for authenticating inbound callers taking Web interviews. Choose the fields you want to use and cancel any you do not.

If you need to be able to select specific participant records, you should select the Id field because this is a key to the database and is guaranteed to contain a unique value for each record.

If you authenticate on a field that may contain non-unique values, the sample management system will select the first record whose value in that column matches the values specified in the sample management script.

Field names. You cannot modify these settings.

Default values to be inserted into empty fields. Fields with no default values will have a null value. You may specify your own defaults as long as the values are consistent with the fields' data types and lengths.

The type of data in the field. You cannot change the data type of required fields.

The number of characters that can be held in a text field. You cannot change the length of required fields.