Sample tables for telephone interviewing projects

Sample tables for telephone interviewing projects must also include the following columns. If they do not exist, they will be added automatically if you select the “Use sample for phone interviewing” option described later in this topic, or if you activate the project using the With Phone Interviewing option on the Sample Management tab (see Sample Management) of the Launch activity.

The StartTime of the latest record in history table for a specific sample.

The time at which the respondent asked to be called. (Times are shown in UTC format. The project’s Sample Management script takes into account any time differences between interviewers and participants when it selects records for calling.)

The number of calls made to this record after an appointment was set.

A list of the changes that interviewers have made to this record.

The call outcome code for the previous call to this record.

The number of call recordings for this record. Call recording is an option when a telephone interviewing project uses an autodialer.

Additional information about the participant. To protect the contents of this field, see Restricting access to specific participant fields.

The number of connect returns for the record.

Ensure that records are called at specific times of the day in order to increase the chance of success in reaching participants.

Defines the participant record expiration date and time. For example, a project might dictate that participant records can only be called within a specific date range.

Expired records are not available for dialing (except for retrieving appointments).

Freeform string that can be used to store whatever your dialer requires. For example, this field could contain Name=Value pairs that you need to store after calling the record. This could be useful when the record is dialed again.

How the record can be used: set to Web for an inbound self-completion interview or Phone for outbound telephone interviewing. Can be set by the script as Phone, Web, or Personal.

The number of no answer returns for the record.

The participant’s phone number. If you are uploading records for a telephone interviewing project and you want interviewers to be able to dial phone numbers automatically by using a modem, phone numbers must be formatted as follows:

+Country/RegionCode (Area/CityCode) SubscriberNumber

For example, +44 12 3456 7890 for a subscriber in the United Kingdom. The modem option might not work if the phone number is in any other format.

If your telephone interviewing project will use an autodialer, the phone number must contain only the digits 0 to 9, * and #, optionally preceded by + (plus symbol) for international access codes. It can also contain the visual separators SPACE, (, ), . and -. Visual separators are not allowed before the first digit.

To protect the contents of this field, see Restricting access to specific participant fields.

The interviewer who last retrieved the record. Used by the Sample Management script to return an appointment to the interviewer who arranged it.

The name of the queue in which the record was previously held.

The time in UTC that was set as the callback time for appointments that are set automatically by the Sample Management script.

The time at which the record was returned to Sample Management.

Allows you to identify which respondents are the suitable candidates for the current survey. Screener questions are designed to filter respondents. If a respondent answers do not meet the Screener criteria, the respondent is not allowed to continue the survey, and the Screener field is recorded as Failed. If respondent answers meet the Screener criteria, they are allowed to continue the survey, and the Screener field is recorded as Passed.

This integer column can be used to define the order in which participant records are selected from the FRESH queue by the sample management system. If you are using the telephone-interviewing sample management script that is supplied with UNICOM Intelligence Interviewer, the script will select the record with the lowest value in this column.

You can populate this column in one of two ways: by including your own values for SortId in your text file, or by specifying that this column should be populated with random values automatically when your file is uploaded. To specify that you want random values, select the “Re-randomize all participant records” option on the Upload tab (see Naming the database server, sample database, and sample table). Note that this will also result in new values being assigned to any existing records in the sample table.

If you do not to populate this column, Participants sets its value to Null when loading a participant record. The telephone-interviewing sample management script that is supplied with UNICOM Intelligence Interviewer will then select the record from the FRESH queue that has the lowest value in the Id column.

The participant’s timezone.

If sample records are used in telephone interviewing projects, you can use the TrunkGroup field to specify which trunk group of the dialer will be used for dialing the sample record. If you want the dialer to automatically select the trunk group, the field should be set to NULL or empty.