You can use the Load Candidate Sites action, available on the Study lifecycle, to load Candidate Sites using a properly formatted CSV file. Using the information in the CSV, Vault creates new Candidate Site records and automatically enters the Organization, Location, and Person records for the new site records based on text matching.
How to Run the Load Candidate Sites Action
If you have a properly formatted CSV that includes Candidate Sites for a Study, you can use this CSV to automatically create the Candidate Sites in Vault. Here’s how:
- Locate the Study to which you want to add Candidate Sites.
- From the All Actions menu, select Load Candidate Sites.
- Click Upload Candidate Sites and select the properly formatted CSV file you wish to use to upload Candidate Sites.
- Click Submit.
- Vault verifies the information, processes the records, and creates the new Candidate Sites.
For more detailed information about Vault’s validation and processing of the records, see below.
Site Candidate CSV Validation
When you select a CSV for upload, Vault performs a series of validation checks. First, it checks the format and size of the CSV to ensure that the data is not corrupted, the file is not too large (greater than 2000 rows), and that the file is, indeed, a CSV. Next, Vault checks the headers present in the file. The following are mandatory:
- Study Country
- Site Name
If these are not present, Vault issues an error and does not proceed. Vault also checks the CSV to see if the following optional fields are present:
- Principal Investigator
- Organization
- Location
If any of these fields is not present, you must confirm that you wish to continue. Additionally, if the Location field is populated, the Organization field must also be populated.
Site Candidate Loader Processing
Once successfully performing the validation checks, Vault enables the Submit button in the dialog window. When you click the Submit button, Vault begins the Process Site Candidate Loader job to process the file. Vault uses text matching to process the CSV. To this end, Vault treats all values as if they are lowercase and without any spaces. Further, it ignores any special characters and leading/trailing whitespace.
Vault first attempts to match the Study Country value from the CSV to an existing study country Name (name__v), Country Name (country__v), and External ID (external_ID__v).
Vault sets the name__v field on the Study Site object to the value of the “Site Name” column on the CSV.
To determine the newly-created site record’s Organization value, Vault attempts to match the CSV value to organization__v records already in Vault based on following fields on the organization__v object:
- Name (
name__v) - External ID (
external_id__v)
If there are multiple matches for the Organization field, Vault does not populate the Organization field on the newly created Site record. If Vault locates a single match, it sets the organization__clin field on the new site__v record to the matching Organization value.
To determine the newly-created site record’s Location value, Vault attempts to match the CSV value to the CSV value to location __v records based on the following fields on the on the location__v object:
- Name (
name__v) - External ID (
external_id__v)
Vault only searches the location__v records whose parent organization__v is the record identified in the previous step. If it locates a single match, Vault sets the location__v field of the new site__v record as the matching Organization record. Further, if only one location exists for the parent Organization record, Vault defaults that location for the new site__v record.
Vault attempts to match the CSV Principal Investigator heading value to the following Person (person__sys) object fields:
- Name (
name__v) - Email (
email__sys) - External ID (
external_id__v)
If Vault locates a single match, it populates the principal_investigator__v field of the new site__v record with the matching value. If there are multiple matching Person records, Vault does not populate the principal_investigator__v field on the new site__v object at all.
Vault creates a new site__v record for each record it processes in the CSV. See the table below for a recap of how Vault populates the site__v fields:
| CSV Header | Matches in Vault |
| Site Name | name__v
|
| Study Country | study_country__v
|
| Organization | organization__v
|
| Location | location__v
|
| Principal Investigator | primary_investigator
|
When the Process Site Candidate Loader job is complete, Vault sends a message to the user who initiated the job. This message contains the number of records Vault created subsequent to running the job and a CSV containing individual successes and failures.