Uploading and importing ESG questionnaires
When a customer sends you a questionnaire, upload it just as it arrived. ESGelerate finds the questions by itself, takes over any answers already in the file and matches all the others against your answer bank straight away.
Uploading a questionnaire
- Open Questionnaires and click + Upload questionnaire.
- Under Customer, enter who the questionnaire is from. The name appears in your list of questionnaires and in the export.
- Under File, choose your customer's file – unchanged. There are no columns to mark, no sheets to delete and nothing to rearrange.
- Click Upload.
The questionnaire then opens with every question found, in the order of the file. Each question shows where it is in the original file, so you can find it again while reviewing.
What happens on upload
- The questions are found. ESGelerate works out by itself where in the file the questions are.
- Existing answers are taken over. If the file already contains an answer, it appears with the status imported. Matching leaves it as it is.
- Everything else is matched. For each open question, ESGelerate looks for the right answer in your answer bank. How that works and how to review the suggestions is covered under Matching & review.
In your list of questionnaires, the status shows how far along each one is:
| Status | Meaning |
|---|---|
| matched | uploaded and matched against the answer bank, not reviewed yet |
| reviewed | you have saved the answers at least once |
| exported | the completed questionnaire has been downloaded at least once |
When a file can't be read
If ESGelerate can't read a file or finds no questions in it, you stay on the form and see a message such as "This file couldn't be read." Nothing is created in that case.
Check that you uploaded your customer's original file – and not, say, a scan or a photo of it. If it still doesn't work, get in touch: which files ESGelerate reads is driven by what our customers actually receive.
Building your answer bank from past questionnaires
You've already given most of the answers – in the questionnaires you filled in over the past few years. Instead of typing them up again, upload one of them:
- Upload a questionnaire you once sent back filled in.
- Your answers from back then appear with the status imported. Next to them, ESGelerate shows the most similar entries already in your answer bank.
- For each question, check the Save/update in the answer bank as tick box and choose the right category. The choice starts on the first category in the list, so set it for every question.
- Untick questions whose answer only applies to this one customer.
- Click Save answers.
Every ticked question becomes an entry in your answer bank, with the questionnaire's wording as its question. In the next questionnaire, ESGelerate fills in these answers automatically wherever a question clearly matches.
Start with the most comprehensive questionnaire you have. Every one after that only adds what's missing – and the suggestions next to the imported answers show you where your answers from different years contradict each other.
If you pick an existing entry for an imported question with Use this, saving updates that entry instead of creating a new one.