How Does "New Data Set and Updates to Existing Data Sets" Work?

When importing data there were previously two type of imports that could be used, either you imported a new data set or a data set containing updates to already existing data sets. It was not possible to add a mixture of new and old respondents. 

A third option is available which is used when the imported data set contains both new data and updates to existing data sets. This option is useful when, for example, importing data from a data collection platform where each imported data set contains both new data and updates to already imported respondents.

Here we see the three different import options in the import data page, the same options are also available when setting up scheduled data imports.

In the image below you see an example, the second data import is using the new “New data set and Updates to existing data sets”, the third table below shows the result after data activation. 

Note: When using the new option “New data set and Updates to existing” the mapping is always done by the respondent id so you need to include those in the data files to keep track on them, the option to generate those in the system should not be used.

Note: The existing respondents are updated with the data in the imported file only, if a variable is missing for some reason the data of that variable is not being updated, see example of that below.

Here we see an example where the data file with updates does not contain the “Survey completed” variable, in this case the “Survey completed” data from first data file is still used after data activation in respondent id 1 and 2.