Sample (or participant) records store information about prospective participants in the survey. The records can be used for inbound (Web) or outbound (telephone) interviews. The records are stored in SQL databases and are loaded using the Participants activity in UNICOM Intelligence Interviewer - Server Admin. See “Participants” in the UNICOM Intelligence Interviewer - Server User's Guide for details.

Each record consists of a number of fields (columns in SQL) that each contain different information. For Web (inbound) interviews you might have fields called Id, Name and Password that store the participants' unique IDs, login names and passwords for logging in to the survey. For outbound telephone interviews you might have fields called Id and PhoneNumber, as well as various other fields that the telephone interviewing activity requires for managing calls.

Sometimes, your sample records will contain other information about the participants. For example, if you are running an employee survey for your company, you might have fields for the participants' names and job titles. You might also have information about how long they have worked for the company. You can copy this information into the interview script and use it to personalize greetings, or as a means of determining which questions each person is asked, or to populate questions with data automatically so that you don't have to ask for things that you already know. For more information, see Using sample data in interviews.

You can also copy interview data into sample records. You can write data into new fields or you can update existing fields with new information. For example, if someone has married or remarried, you can update that person’s name if this has changed; or, if you started with telephone numbers only, you can ask for participants' names during the interview and write them back into the sample records for future use. For more information, see Updating sample records with interview data.