Importing participants
If you already have a list of your consortium, for example from the proposal, you can import it into Participants: organisations, and below them departments, teams or individual staff members. The general rules for files, mapping and error files are described in Importing into EMDESK.
💡 Note:
- You need Manage rights to Participants or to the parent participant you import into (see Roles and access rights), and the latest plan version must be editable.
- Your workspace needs participant types (Settings › Customization), e.g. RTO, SME or STAFF.
Plan your levels: one file per level
A participant can only be placed under a parent participant that already exists in EMDESK when you start the import. A parent that is in the same file does not count yet. This means you cannot import organisations together with their departments or staff members from one file.
Instead, prepare one file per level and import the files one after another, starting at the top:
| File 1 | The first level, e.g. all organisations of the consortium. Leave Parent Participant empty. |
| File 2 | Everything directly under an organisation, e.g. departments, teams or staff members. In Parent Participant, enter the organisation each row belongs to. |
| File 3 | The next level, e.g. the staff members of a department, with the department as Parent Participant. |
Only start the next file when the previous one has been imported completely. For example:
File 1 (organisations):
| Participant name | Short | Participant Type | Parent Participant |
| Aurelian University of Technology | AUR | EDU | |
| Helix Sensors GmbH | HELIX | SME |
File 2 (staff members of the organisations):
| Participant name | Short | Participant Type | Parent Participant |
| Elena Rossi | E. Rossi | STAFF | AUR |
| Marco Bianchi | M. Bianchi | STAFF | AUR |
| Jonas Weber | J. Weber | STAFF | HELIX |
Tip: Use the Short name of the parent from file 1 as Parent Participant in file 2, as in the example. The participant's ID (e.g. P1) or its exact name works as well.
If a row refers to a parent participant that does not exist yet, this row is not imported. It is listed in the error file with Parent Participant marked red, and the other rows are imported as usual. Once the parent exists, you can simply import the error file again.
Columns of the file
Each row is one participant. These columns are required:
| Participant name | The name, e.g. Aurelian University of Technology, Team A or Elena Rossi. |
| Short | The short name, e.g. AUR. |
| Participant Type | The short name or name of a participant type of your workspace, e.g. RTO or Research organisation. |
These columns are optional:
| Parent Participant | The participant under which this one is created: ID, short name or name, e.g. P1 or AUR. It must already exist (see Plan your levels). |
| Description / Other | Free text. |
| Budget Limit | The budget limit as a number, e.g. 250000, in the currency of the workspace. |
| Address 1, Address 2, PO Box, Postal Code, City | The address, in any format. |
| Country | The country name, e.g. Germany. |
| Phone, Fax, Website | Contact details, in any format. |
| Tags | Tags, separated by commas, e.g. third-party,new. |
| Custom Identifier | Your own ID, e.g. P7. If empty, EMDESK numbers the participant according to your ID settings. |
Tip: The Sample spreadsheet in the import dialog contains all these columns with example rows.
Importing step by step
- Prepare one file per level as described in Plan your levels. Start with the file of the first level, e.g. the organisations.
- Open Participants and click + Import at the bottom of the table. (The arrow next to it opens the import of personnel cost rates.)
- Click Select or drop file and choose your file.
- Check the mapping: columns with matching headers are mapped automatically (green). Map other columns with the dropdown on the right; columns without a property are not imported.
- Click Import now. If a required column is missing, click Next first and enter a default value for it, e.g. the same participant type for all rows.
- When the message Import completed. appears, check the new participants. If an error file was downloaded, correct it and import it again (see Result and error file).
- Import the file of the next level the same way (steps 2 to 6), e.g. the staff members. Repeat until all levels are imported.
Next, import the personnel cost rates of your participants, or add them in their financial profile. You can rearrange participants afterwards, see Creating, editing, and organising participants.