Errors in your Employees overview

Francisco Cirigliano

October 29, 2024 13:21

Starting point You have successfully uploaded your employee data to My Effectory. If your data contains errors, a banner at the top of your Employees overview will indicate that some employee details need to be checked.

Some inconsistencies or errors may be overlooked when importing or adjusting your employee data. Luckily, our platform "thinks" along notifies you about errors and how to resolve them.

This article provides a detailed overview of the errors you may encounter once your data has been successfully imported. Please refer to this article to learn more about warnings during your employee data import.

Fixing employee data errors

There are two ways to fix employee data errors:

Through the error banner

If your data contains errors, a banner at the top of your Employees overview will indicate that some employees need to be checked. You are given two options:

Fix errors here: This option opens a separate screen in which all errors are listed per category. You can select Fix errors for each error category to take action immediately.

Download to fix in Excel: Selecting this option will start the download of an Excel spreadsheet containing all your employee data. The records that contain errors are highlighted in light red, with the specific cell where the error occurs highlighted in dark red. Once you've resolved the errors, you can import the adjusted file into My Effectory, and your changes will be applied.

In the Employees overview

You may also choose to fix the errors directly in the Employees overview. The columns containing errors are marked with an orange warning sign, and the cells where the errors occur are outlined in red. By hovering over the column header, a description of the error pops up.

You can choose from the following options:

Find the cells containing errors and adjust the content in the Employees overview.
Select participants using the checkboxes on the left-hand side. An action menu will appear at the bottom of the page.
- Select Show errors to make them appear in the data overview and adjust them manually.
- Select Ignore errors if you don't want to make any adjustments. You can find any ignored errors later by clicking on the three dots icon on the top right of the page and selecting Ignored errors.
- Select Delete employees if you want to remove the employees altogether.

Types of errors

My Effectory can signal errors on any variable (or column) on which validation checks are done. Below are the types of errors that can occur and how you can resolve them:

1. E-mail addresses are not unique

Why do you receive this error? You should avoid duplicate e-mail addresses, or some of your employees may not receive survey invites. If you have not allowed duplicates in your E-mail address column settings, My Effectory will mark any duplicates as errors.

How to fix it? You may fix these errors in any way described in the previous paragraph or change the column settings to allow duplicate e-mail addresses.

2. E-mail addresses belong to domains that are not allowed

Why do you receive this error? Some of your employees' e-mail addresses belong to domains not included in your allowed e-mail domains.

How to fix it? You have two options:

Adjust these employees' e-mail addresses.
Add their domains to your allowed domains in Column settings.

3. Values are invalid or missing

Why do you receive this error? This error may appear in columns where variables undergo specific validation checks by default, such as E-mail address, Manager e-mail address, Language, and Gender. If cells in these columns contain invalid data or are left empty, My Effectory will notify you and recommend you resolve these errors.

These variables are fundamental for carrying out surveys successfully and gaining meaningful insights. For instance:

Missing e-mail addresses will result in participants not receiving digital survey invitations.
If an employee's language value is invalid or missing, we will use your organization's default language for their invitations and surveys.
Employees whose gender value is missing will not be grouped in a gender category in the results.

How to fix it? Try to fix as many of these errors as possible! You may do so either by correcting invalid values in your dataset or by switching on Allow empty values in the column's settings.

4. Values are missing

Why do you receive this error? This error applies to any custom columns for which you did not enable the Allow empty values setting. It indicates that values in those columns are missing for some participants.

How to fix it? You may fix these errors by adding values to your dataset where needed or switching on Allow empty values in the column's settings.

Note: If an employee's First name value is missing, they will be addressed as participant in the user mailings!

5. Dates are invalid or missing

Why do you receive this error? When importing your employee data into My Effectory, you must indicate which date format is in use in your file. The system checks the file for any cells that do not match the selected date format and provides immediate feedback in case of inconsistencies.

This error indicates that there are date format inconsistencies in your employee data that need to be corrected. If they are not, the dates in question will be excluded from any data segmentation in your survey results.

How to fix it? To resolve these errors, ensure that all dates in your employee data use the same date format (DD/MM/YYYY or MM/DD/YYYY).

6. Errors in your manager data

Why do you receive this error? When you include manager data for each of your employees, based on your organizational structure and coordinator linking settings, My Effectory will turn your managers into group coordinators and give them access to their groups’ survey settings and results.

You should ensure that the entered manager data aligns with your organizational structure to avoid errors. My Effectory checks for consistency in the hierarchical order of managers, and if discrepancies arise, this error will be flagged.

Note: These errors often occur due to circular loops in the managerial hierarchy! For instance, where Manager A manages Manager B, and Manager B manages Manager A. Find out more about circular loops in this article!

Ignoring errors

You may also choose to ignore some or all errors flagged in your employee data. To do so:

Go to your Employees overview.
Use the checkboxes on the left-hand side to select the employees whose errors you want to ignore.
> A menu will appear at the bottom of the page.
In the menu, select Ignore errors.

Ignored errors will no longer be highlighted in red in your employee data or shown in the error banner at the top of your Employees overview. Instead, you can find them by clicking on the three dots icon at the top right of the page and selecting Ignored errors.

Important: Please keep in mind that these errors are not resolved, only hidden! As such, they may still affect the quality of your employee data and your participants' experiences!

Tip! If you want to show the errors you've dismissed, follow the same process described above and select Show errors instead of Ignore errors.