Inviting Participants

Participants can join your project in a few different ways, as described in enrolling using MyDataHelps. You can also invite participants manually.

1. Open your project and go to the "Add/Invite Participants" tab.
2. Paste in comma-separated value (CSV) data or upload a CSV file containing the participant data.
3. Select "Preview and Send Invitations."
   
4. Confirm the data for each participant in the invitation preview, and elect whether to enable MyDataHelps enrollment and send invitation emails. These options are described in more detail below.
   
5. Select "Add Participants."

By default, invited participants may enroll in the project using the MyDataHelps app.  You can un-check the "Enable Enrolling via MyDataHelps" option if you want to enroll participants via a shared study device in a clinical setting.

Also by default, a standard invitation email is sent to all participants. You can un-check the "Send Invitation Email" option if you don't want to send these automatic emails. Some projects prefer to send invitations through their existing email channels, where you can customize the appearance of invitations, control the timing of deliveries, or track email analytics.

Updating Invitations

If you include a the "ParticipantIdentifier" field in your CSV data, you will be presented with the "Update Existing Participants" option. If this option is checked, the system will update data for any existing participants whose identifiers are on the list. New participants will be added as normal.

Existing participants will not receive an email invitation, and you will not see the "Send Invitations" option if there are no new participants. Email and phone number are associated with the participant's MyDataHelps account, and cannot be updated in this fashion.

Formatting Your CSV Data

You can enter invitations manually in the text field, or upload a Comma-Separated Value (CSV) file, exported from Microsoft Excel or a similar application.

The first line will contain the field names for each column. Additional lines will contain data for each participant, one per line, with the fields separated by commas. For example:

Email,LastName,Gender
test@example.com,Smith,Male
test2@example.com,Jones,Male
test3@example.com,Williams,Female 

Available fields are listed in the right panel. They include standard fields, described below, and any custom fields you have defined for your project.

Standard Fields

Custom Fields

If you have defined your own custom fields for participants, you can set those custom fields in the CSV data just as you would a standard field. For example, if you have a custom field named "SurgeryDate", you can specify it for any participants whose date of surgery is known at the time of invitation and leave it blank for others.

Email,LastName,SurgeryDate,Gender
test@example.com,Smith,6/1/2020,Male
test2@example.com,Jones,,Male
test3@example.com,Williams,8/15/2020,Female

Be sure that the name in the title row exactly matches the name of your custom field.

Required Fields

An email address or participant identifier is required for each row, to uniquely identify each participant. The participant identifier is required (even if you have specified an email) if you have enabled "Requires Identifier Validation" in your project settings. All other fields are optional.

For instance, if you'd like to just invite a handful of people via email and do not want to enter an identifier, name, DOB, or anything else, you can enter something like the following:

Email
test@example.com
test2@example.com
test3@example.com

Omitting Fields for Certain Participants

Other than email, which is required for every row, you can omit fields for some participants and not others. Just be sure to leave an empty placeholder in the CSV data for the missing field.

Email,LastName,FirstName,Gender
test@example.com,Smith,John,Male
test2@example.com,Jones,Male

Email,LastName,FirstName,Gender
test@example.com,Smith,John,Male
test2@example.com,Jones,,Male