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“Import data” vs. “Org upload”: What's the difference?

Learn the difference between importing data in PI Diagnose vs. uploading organization data to PI Administration.

Updated this week

This article applies to organization admins and Diagnose admins in the PI2 platform.

As a PI software admin, you may be familiar with the process of uploading a spreadsheet or CSV file containing employee information.

There are 2 places where this file upload can take place:

  • PI Administration: This process is known as “organization upload," or “org upload” for short.

In this article, we'll explain the differences between these 2 processes. We'll also explain when you may wish to use one over the other.

What is "organization upload"? (Administration)

Org upload is designed to help you quickly update employee data in PI. With org upload, you can perform the following actions:

  • Add new employee records

  • Send the PI Behavioral Assessment in bulk

  • Grant bulk access to the PI software

  • Update employee information (email, manager, department, location, etc.)

The "org upload" method captures the following fields:

  • EmployeeEmail

  • SecondaryEmail (e.g., a personal email)

  • FirstName

  • LastName

  • JobTitle

  • ManagerEmail

  • DateOfHire

  • Department

  • Location

Important: The org upload process is available only to organization admins.

What is "import data"? (Diagnose)

Import data is designed to help you send and analyze engagement surveys. By importing data to Diagnose, we're able to capture demographic data for your survey population — such as age, tenure, and location — so that you can filter the data accordingly.

The "import data" method captures the following fields:

  • EmployeeEmail

  • FirstName

  • LastName

  • ManagerEmail

  • Department

  • DateOfBirth

  • DateOfHire

  • Gender

  • Location

  • EmployeeLevel (e.g., manager, individual contributor)

  • EmployeeType (e.g., full time, part time, contractor)

Important: Both organization admins and Diagnose admins can import data to send a survey.

Note: "Race" demographic data is not captured during this process. If you would like to understand engagement trends by race, you can do so by adding a custom field to your spreadsheet.

What's the difference between the two?

“Org upload” is more of an administrative task. It helps organization admins keep employee data up to date, so that other PI users (managers, team members, etc.) can get accurate information from the software.

“Import data,” by contrast, is used purely for engagement surveys. If you are an HR leader, department head, or team lead with access to Diagnose, you may decide to import data to get the highest quality data from our surveys.

Does org data carry over between Administration and Diagnose?

Generally, no. We recommend thinking of these two file uploads as separate processes.

If you upload org data via Administration, the data does not automatically carry over to Diagnose. For this reason, we encourage uploading a fresh file whenever you’re sending out a new survey.

Likewise, any sensitive data you collect in Diagnose, such as age, gender, and race, is kept confidential to Diagnose.

Exception: When importing data to Diagnose, non-demographic data (such as employee names and email addresses) will carry over to Administration. As mentioned before, however, the inverse is not true: Updates in Administration do not automatically carry over to Diagnose.

We recommend always keeping employee data up to date via an external source of truth, whether that's in a spreadsheet or via an HRIS.

FAQs

We keep employee data updated via an HRIS. Does PI offer HRIS integrations?

Yes. The Predictive Index supports 60+ HRIS (Human Resource Information System) providers. Learn more about our HRIS integrations here.

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