Unit data fields

Company > Units > Data Fields

Unit data fields are attributes unique to a Unit, such as the Unit’s name or email address. They can also be information shared with other Units and used to analyze survey data in relation to the organizational hierarchy, such as department name or tenure period. Unit fields are often used in surveys to ask questions about an element of the Unit. Each Unit data field appears as a property on the Units and Unit groups admin screens. This screen defines the Unit data fields for all Units in the company.

Organizational information, such as Brand or Region, are best stored as Unit groups, not Unit data fields. See Units for a discussion about Unit and Group Data fields.

Unit data fields have two identifying properties:

  • Name — Human-readable label to show on reports and Setup, and it can contain spaces and some punctuation, such as Acme Restaurant 1.
  • Keyname — Unique identifier used to reference the field programmatically. When referencing the field, precede the name with u_, such as u_acme_restaurant1.

Unit Data Field topics:

Properties

Name
Name of the field. Human-readable label to show on Reports and Setup.
Restriction: Name can have a maximum of 63 characters.
Keyname
Unique identifier for the field, such as acme_restaurant. When referencing the field, preceded the name with u_, such as "u_acme_restaurant1".
Tip: When building a program, be consistent in naming convention for creating identifiers.
Priority
Where this field should appear when a list of Unit Data Fields, such as on the Units screen. Lower number appear near the beginning or top of the list.
Description
Internal comments about this item. Best practice is to enter a description of the item, include the date it was added, who added the it, and its intended use.
Required
Select this property to indicate a value is needed for every Unit record. When importing Unit records, the Auto Importer specification will need to ensure this field has a value.
Used for Duplicate Checking, Cohort Tracking, Sampling Priority, Episode Conditions, or Quarantine Rules
Select this property to use it for Duplicate Checking, Cohort Tracking, Sampling Priority, Episode Conditions, or Quarantine Rules.

Do not select this unless this field is specifically needed for one of the named functions. This option slows database performance.

Important: After turning this on, run a Backfill to apply this to all existing records.
Used for ACE
Whether or not to include this field in reports generated by Anti-cheating Engine.
Internal
Indicates the field is used for Medallia Experience Cloud internal purposes only. When an internal field is visible, it is for informational purposes only.
PersistedInSurveyTable

Select this property to retain the value of this field in associated survey records.

When not selected, survey records look up the current value of this field instead of using the value at the time the record was created. For example, this might be turned on to retain the name of a person associated with the unit at the time the survey record was created. However, if the person is a manager, it is more likely the company would want to know the current manager responsible for the unit, so persistence would need to be off.

This functionality is rarely used; contact your Medallia expert before using it.

Restriction: Once this is turned on, it can never be turned off because doing so causes stale data in survey records.
SFGs affected
Obsolete. This property is no longer used.
AlternativeSet
The type of data that can be stored in this field, such as Text, Email, or any enumerated set. See Email fields for information about using the Email type.
Warning: Changing the Alternative set clears the data for this field.
Set the Alternative set to Translatable Text to make all the values that are provided on this field appear in the Translations.
Company
Obsolete. This property is no longer used.
TranslationExplanation
An explanation of this field to assist translators when they are deciding how to translate this field (for more information, see Localization). This is rarely used; the default value is the Keyname with prepended u_.

Email fields

Unit data Ffelds of Alt Set type Email can be used for Alert notifications. Typically there will be two email fields:

  • One for the front line employee’s email address.
  • One for the employee’s manager’s email address.

Notifications can then be routed to the employee, while overdue notifications can be routed to the employee’s manager for escalation.

Tips and best practices

  • To use the field in Sampling, select Used for Duplicate Checking, Cohort Tracking, Sampling Priority, Episode Conditions, or Quarantine Rules.

  • Unit data fields are available for referencing in a survey as long as the value of e_unitid is known for the record. Personalized (feeded) surveys should include this field in the import file. In Anonymous (feedless) surveys, the e_unitid is unknown, but it can be set based on a question in the survey. The following script can be executed (in a postcondition, for example) to set the value of e_unitid based on a Question field:

    function setUnit() 
{	
    var feedbackUnit = fields.get('unit_id');	
    fields.set('e_unitid',feedbackUnit);
}
setUnit();

    Once the e_unitid is known, Unit data fields can be called out directly in any condition or field. For example a survey page could have the following condition, where a Unit data field is referenced directly:

    country_code = 10

  • To use the field in survey conditions, select Required. Additionally, see Units for more details on using Unit information in a survey.

  • K-fields can access Unit Fields with the getUnitDatafield() function.
  • If Unit data fields aren’t being populated as you expect, check the Auto Importer specification, and review the corresponding Import Processing Reports and Org files.

  • To use the name in Response Form reports, use the following syntax:

    [=?u_acme_restaurant1:F&B]: Restaurant 1

    Anything outside the bracket appears as-is. There are two components within the bracket, separated by colon (:), the label name and the default value if the name cannot be displayed (for example, in aggregate values on the Satisfaction Table). Using the syntax in the example above:

    • The Responses Form shows 20/20 Bistro: Restaurant 1
    • The Satisfaction Table shows F&B: Restaurant 1