Manage your people database

People allow you to track and manage your interview participants. People can be attached to notes and insights, providing traceability of your interactions with each research participant. People are available to your entire workspace and are not specific to a project.

The people table is accessible via settings. This table allows you to create, edit, sort, filter and search through your participants.

To create a single person:

1. Click Add person.

2. Enter the name of the person, or how you would like them to be referred to.

3. Optionally, upload a photo or add a Dove-atar.

To create multiple people at once:

1. Select Import data in the top right.

2. Upload your CSV file containing a list of your people, following our manual import guidelines.

3. Choose how you want to manage duplicate people on import.

4. To add character to People in your workspace, bulk apply Dove-atar profile pictures: click the checkboxes to select people, and click Randomize profile picture.

People have ‘person fields’ that allow you to segment your participants for search and analysis purposes. Person fields are very flexible, however, most of our customers use them to capture demographic information (like participant name, age, location), contact details (like email address or phone number), and metadata (like interview date or persona type).

Only managers are able to create and edit Person fields. To do this:

1. Open a Person's profile.

2. Click + New field.

3. Enter a name for your field.

4. Select a type for your field. The default type will be text.

5. Click Create.

You can update the value of a person field by clicking the placeholder text to the right of the field name.

A person field’s name can be updated by clicking on it. The type of a person field can be changed, however be aware that the values stored in that field may be removed if the field type is changed.

You can also drag and drop each field to rearrange their display order.

We currently support the following person field types:

• Text – Any text characters, up to a maximum of 300.

• Number – Any positive or negative integer.

• Date – Any date in the format YYYY-MM-DD.

• Checkbox – A toggle switch for true / false.

• URL – Any valid website link or URL.

• Single select – Assign one option from a list of up to 200.

• Multi select – Assign up to 100 options from a list of up to 200.

• Email – Any valid email address.

• Phone – Any valid phone number.

• NPS – Any number from 0-10 on the Net Promoter Score scale.

You can filter search results by specific people or the values you’ve stored in person fields from the People database, or via the global search bar. See this help article for information on searching in Dovetail: Search and filter data and tags.

People can be added to your notes or insights in projects using data fields. This provides traceability of specific research you've done related to a particular person. To add people to a note or insight:

1. Click + New field.

2. Enter a name for the field (e.g., ‘Participant‘).

3. Choose ‘People‘ as the type.

4. Select the relevant people as the field value.

Dovetail includes access controls to allow workspace admins to configure which user roles can access the People database and People fields within notes.

• Managers and Contributors - both Managers and Contributors will be able to view and edit the People database and access People fields within notes

• Managers only - only Managers can view and edit the People database and access People fields within notes

• No access - no users will be able to view or edit the People database or access People fields within notes

To adjust access to the People database:

1. Click the ⚙️ menu at the top right of the screen.

2. Go to the Authentication tab and scroll down to People access.

3. Select the desired access control level from the drop down.

Managers can download a spreadsheet of stored people from the workspace. This spreadsheet will contain a number of columns with field data in a CSV format, and can be opened with Apple Numbers, Google Sheets, Microsoft Excel, or other spreadsheet software.

To download people:

1. Select ⚙️ settings in the top-right of the screen.

2. Select the People database in the menu

3. Select Actions (...) to the top right of the table.

4. Select Export.