Upload file

Upload file defines what data comes into Ad Hoc surveys to send out surveys using the Email invitations. For example, you might want to collect some feedback about a meet-up event you hosted. The information you need about the attendees are their names and emails — the most common data they provide, though you may include more details. Optionally, you may also include information about the event, such as the date and venue, if your survey or invitation email refer to that. All that information is condensed in a file you need to upload to send the Ad Hoc surveys appropriately.

Upload file screen with an invitation file uploaded and some fields mapped.

Ad Hoc survey fields

Ad hoc surveys require you to provide information about the individuals and their interactions with you, which Experience Cloud collects and stores in Program fields.

Every field represents the information you want to bring in to the Ad Hoc survey, which you use to capture feedback in the survey and to display in Results, as well as in custom Admin Suite Reports (if any). This information are the cells values in the data file, where each column header corresponds to a field and each individual row is a record. See Program fields for details on fields in Experience Cloud.

Ad Hoc survey comes with these required fields:

Email (non-editable)
First name (only field requiredness can be edited)

If an Ad Hoc survey is multi-language, Preferred language is also a required field. See Preferred language for more information.

Default required fields for Ad Hoc programs are Email and First name. If a program is multi-language, Preferred language field is also required.

Tip: You may use these fields in other parts of Experience Cloud, such as Alerts, Reports, Text Analytics, etc. If a unit is not specified, the Ad Hoc survey creates a dummy unit per company which can't be edited or deleted.

Upload and map data

To bring information into the Ad Hoc survey, upload a file containing audience data, which later needs to be mapped to fields. As mentioned before, these fields is how Experience Cloud stores information to use it in surveys, emails, reports, etc.

Upload a file

Files are organized into columns that represent individual data points, and rows that represent the individuals and their interaction with your company. They must contain values for, at least, two columns: Email and First name, as those are the default required fields for Ad Hoc surveys to work. In multi-language cases, a Preferred language column is also required to identify the language used to send Email invitations and display surveys for each individual. Any other information to bring in needs to be part of that file, where each column value is stored in a field. Additionally, if any other field is piped in or is used for conditioning in Survey and/or Email invitations, Ad Hoc surveys require those to be part of the file as well. For example, if you include a question in your survey to be displayed only to people who live in the North region, your file must contain a Region column with values in for each record to signal if that question should be shown to them or not.

To upload a file, click Upload file. Click Get a sample file to see an example of how to structure the data in the file.

Restriction: Ad Hoc surveys support XLSX, XLS or CSV flat file format, that is, only rows and columns with given final values on each cell (no formulas). File size can be up to 20 MB and their columns may follow any order.

Once a file is uploaded, Upload file shows:

Your file columns — Number of columns the file has when uploaded. Clicking on Column label reveals the file column headers to choose from to map to the appropriate to the fields.
Medallia fields — Fields in Experience Cloud that are used or needed for the Ad Hoc survey to work properly.
Referenced in — Parts of the survey where the field appears. If a field is referenced in any part of an Ad Hoc survey, it is required and must be part of the invitation file.

Uploaded file shows the number of columns that need to be mapped to Medallia fields.

Important: To comply with GDPR policies, files are deleted after 30 days.

When uploading a new file that contains a different number of columns, you are prompted to confirm the file differences before proceeding to final upload. If the new file adds a new column header, a new Column label row is available to allow mapping; if it removes a new column header, a Column label row is removed.

Upload file asks for confirmation on file differences

Map data

After uploading the file, Ad Hoc surveys detect its column header labels to map them to the corresponding fields.

For required fields, click each Column label and select your file column label that corresponds to each of the fields.
For all other fields, click +Map to field and search for a field to map to your column label.
If none of the existing field fits the file column headers, click +Create new field. See Create fields for details.
Click Save to keep the changes.

Mapping is preserved when uploading a new file but you are prompted to confirm the file differences, if any. It is important to correctly map fields and check that the uploaded data values have a valid format for their data type to avoid issues during the analysis.

If all required and referenced fields are mapped, click Save. Optionally, the file may go through Invitation analysis to validate the file data.

Tip: When changing an existing mapping, search for previously created fields to use existing fields in an Ad Hoc survey before creating new ones.

Create fields

Create fields to map information that is not appropriate for a shared field or to accommodate any custom data that does not fall into any existing field. To create a new field:

Click Map to field and select Create new field.
Enter the field name. This name helps to identify the field in reports and when pulling its data into surveys, Invitation or Reminder emails.
Warning: Field name must be unique within the Ad Hoc survey.
Check Require data for that field if every record must have a value for this field.
On Category, choose:
- Contact — For fields that store information related to the individuals (for example, name, customer ID, or any demographic information).
- Event — For fields that contain information about the interaction itself (for example, transaction ID, transaction date, etc.).
On Data type, choose the type of input values the field accepts, such as:
- Choice set — Stores a set of constrained options (choices) applicable to all records. It requires a label to identify each option and, optionally, a numeric value to perform calculations or use in conditions. Note that the values passed over in the file have to match the one defined here to avoid the record being rejected. For example, use Choice set if your invitation file includes a Loyalty column including tiers such as Platinum, Gold, Silver, applicable to all records.
  Restriction: Each Choice set option and numeric value must be unique from the other options within the same choice set.
- Integer — Stores numbers. It requires a minimum and a maximum number to define the acceptable range. For example, if Minimum is set to 10 and Maximum to 70, any number within that range — such as 28 — is accepted.
- Text — Stores information as plain text.
- Fractional — Stores numbers with decimals. It requires to set a minimum and a maximum number to define the acceptable range, as well a the number of decimals. For example, if Minimum is set to 10, Maximum to 70 and Decimals are 2, any number within that range and with those decimals — such as 28.63 — is accepted.
- Date — Stores date without time. Ad Hoc surveys accept these formats:
  - yyyy/MM/dd
  - MM/dd/yy
  - MM/dd/yyyy
  - dd/MM/yy
  - dd/MM/yyyy
- Datetime — Stores dates and time. Ad Hoc surveys accept these formats:
  - yyyy-MM-dd_HH-mm-ss.SSS Z
  - yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss
  - yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss ZZ
  - yyyy-MM-dd'T'HH:mm:ss
  - yyyy-MM-dd'T'HH:mm:ssZZ
  - yyyy-MM-dd'T'HH:mm:ss.SSS
  - yyyy-MM-dd'T'HH-mm-ss.SSSZZ
- Time — Time without date. Ad Hoc surveys accept these formats:
  - HH:mm:ss
  - HH:mm:ss ZZ
  - HH:mm:ss.SSS
  - HH:mm:ss.SSSZZ
  - HH:mm
  - HH:mm ZZ
- Comment — Stores information similar to text, but translatable.
- Email — Stores email addresses. Accepted email format is youremail@company.com.
Click Save.

Warning:

The status of a field created via Ad Hoc surveys is always a Local field. This means it can only be accessed and used within the Ad Hoc survey in which it was created, and it cannot be reused elsewhere.

By contrast, a Shared field can be used across various parts of Experience Cloud, such as Surveys, Translations, and Reports. Some shared fields are Email (e_email), First name (e_firstname), and Unit (e_unit).

When creating fields for Ad Hoc surveys, do not create them outside of the Ad Hoc interface, and do not remove their association from program fields, as doing so causes unintended behavior like duplicate fields.

Create new field screen.

Manage fields

To edit or clear field mapping, click the field menu and choose Edit field or Clear mapping. If the field is Referenced In certain parts of the Ad Hoc survey, remove the reference before mapping to edit the field.

Click the field action menu to clear mapping or edit the field.

Note that for Email you can only view the field, but you can't edit it and for First name you can choose if it is required or not.

Assign a key field

Assign a key field selects one field to check for duplicate values. By preventing survey triggering for the same invitee or interaction, it avoids increasing opt-out rates.

To assign a key field, click the menu of the field chosen to run the checking. This takes the Ad Hoc survey ID and the assigned key field and runs them against all records on the same uploaded file. If more than one record has the same key value, only the first record is processed and the remainder are discarded. For example, if you select Customer last name as key field, and two rows of your uploaded file have the same Customer last name, the second row is marked as duplicate.

Restriction: Only one field can be assigned per Ad Hoc survey. Key field can't be Email (e_email).

Assign "Customer last name" as key field by clicking the action menu next to the field.

Note: Field assignment is optional. If no field is assigned, the checking runs using the Email (e_email) of the uploaded file records. If Unit is used for mapped, checking is against both Email (e_email) and Unit (e_unit).

Invitation analysis

After required and referenced fields are mapped, select the Invitation Analysis tab and click Analyze file to trigger the invitation file analysis. This look at each record and validate if they pass the Sampling rules, which filter the data in the uploaded file to identify which invitations to send. Sampling includes:

Duplication — A record is repeated in the uploaded file.
Opted out — A record has opted out.
Sampled out — A record doesn't pass a sampling or episode filter.
Quarantines — A record includes a value that meets quarantine conditions.
Data issue — A record has a wrong or mismatched value.

Invitation analysis shows 4 invitations to send out of 5, 1 recorded opted out.

The counter results also show the total number of Email invitations to send, which must total all your file records except those included in the Duplicated, Opted out, Sampled out and Quarantined counters.

The outcome depends on the fields the uploaded file refers to when mapping fields, as well as how Sampling is configured in your instance. Work with your Medallia expert to configure Sampling.

Clicking Download analysis report to get the full-detailed report of the validation process.

Sampling filters and quarantine rules

Experience Cloud instances allow for configuring a Sampling process to identify the records that to be sent the surveys. Sampling is made up of four stages:

Opt out — Excludes invitees who have expressed intent to no longer receive Invitation or Reminder emails. Ad Hoc surveys always respect Opt out.
Sampling filter — Identifies the email invitations to include or exclude, usually based on business rules.
Quarantine rule — Avoids sending email invitations too frequently to the same invitees.
Quota — Attempts to achieve a target count of responses for email invitations sent in a given time period.

By default, Ad Hoc surveys bypass any Sampling filter and Quarantine rule configured in your instance by your Medallia expert. By ignoring these filters and rules, records do not count for sampling filter and quarantine calculation. Conversely, if Sampling filters and Quarantine rules are enabled — by clicking Enable all sampling filters and quarantine rules, they are taken into account in the total calculation number, as it happens for non-Ad Hoc surveys. For non-Ad Hoc surveys, even if the survey uses records that were originally created for an Ad Hoc survey, it will use the existing Quarantine rules configured in the instance. Consider these scenarios on Quarantine rules in Ad Hoc surveys:


	Quarantine rules: Disabled	Quarantine rules: Enabled
Quarantine condition	60 days passed before sending new email invitations (Days = 60)	60 days passed before sending new email invitations (Days = 60)	60 days passed before sending new email invitations (Days = 60)
Enable all sampling filters and quarantine rules	Not selected	Selected	Selected
Invitation file	10 records uploaded	20 records uploaded (previously uploaded records + 10 new records)	20 records uploaded (previously uploaded records + 10 new records)
Emails sent	10 (1 email per record)	20 (1 email per record)	0
Reason	Experience Cloud does not track the sent Invitation emails at all (as if they were never sent). It does not check any quarantine rules nor recently sent emails.	Ad Hoc survey sends an email for each record, including those 10 records previously uploaded and sent, as Enable all sampling filters and quarantine rules was not selected at that time. Experience Cloud did not track the emails sent.	Ad Hoc survey filters all records as they were already sent an email within the quarantine period (60 days), as Enable all sampling filters and quarantine rules was selected. Experience Cloud tracked the emails.

Quarantine process

File records do not respect quota, which ignores attempting the target count of responses (threshold). However, if a Unit is mapped, the record counts towards Quota for non-Ad Hoc surveys. Contact your Medallia expert if Quota is already enabled in your instance.

Import history

Import history report shows all uploaded and processed files in the Ad Hoc survey. It displays information such as the date, status, name and processing results from the Invitation analysis.

To access the import history report:

Navigate to Ad Hoc surveys screen and select an Ad Hoc survey with status Sent.
Click the details pane action menu.
Select View import history.
To see all the processing details, click Download under Processing File report.