This article serves as a "How to" guide on how to import multiple questions at once using a CSV file.
Documentation
First let us look at the documentation that already exists on the subject, Questionmark provides us with a guide and a basic work file to help us start available on their website :
Questionmark help page (you may need to create a free account) : https://help.questionmark.com/hc/en-us/articles/12397663288475-Working-with-Questionmark-CSV-files
Make sure to grab a copy of the template file on the Questionmark website.
Limitations
Before we start working on our question list that we want to import, it is nice to know the different limitations of the tool we are working with so as not to waste time working on a file that the tool will not be able to handle.
- The tool uses comas ( , ) as a separator. Therefore you cannot use commas in your questions and answers.
- The tool does not encode html characters. Therefore any characters not used in the English language may not be rendered correctly following the importation. For example, in French, some words use accents such as: é è à etc. in order to show up correctly in a web browser, they must be coded as "é" for example. Since the tool do not transform those characters into code, the browser may show simply a "???" or "□□□" . To avoid this, use characters native to the English grammar.
- The tool is made to import questions ONLY. Do not include any division titles or any information that is not exactly part of your questions.
- Do not skip lines or columns and do not break a question on multiple lines. 1 line = 1 question.
How to :
- Download the Questionmark-csv-importer file from the Questionmark website.
- Open the file with Excel.
- Copy-Paste the blank question examples from the "Template Exemple" to the "Question" tab. Copy them as many times as the number of questions you want to fill.
- Fill the Question tab with your own questions, making sure to use the right columns for the right information.
Exemple :Question type Question answer value reply anwser value reply and so on MC Where in Canada is the Questionmark office? Edmonton 1 That is correct. Calgary 0 That is incorrect. Toronto 0 That is incorrect. Vancouver 0 That is incorrect. - Don't forget to save your work!
- Transform your Excel file to a CSV file by :
- make sure you are in the "Question" tab
- navigate in excel to : File\ Export\Change File Type\CSV and click Save as
- Since Excel can only convert one tab. A warning will appear, simply click OK
- Revise your CSV file.
- Since your windows configurations may influence the csv conversion, open the new csv file with notepad.
- Make sure that the document is fit for the tool ( see limitation section above).
- For example, my file renders as such :
- Can you spot the errors that need to be fixed (there are 2) ?
- Answers:
- 1. The first two lanes are not questions. delete them
- 2. my separator is ( ; ) and should be ( , ) . use the find and replace option ( ctrl+h ) to find all ( ; ) and replace them with ( , )
- At the end, your CSV file should look like this :
- For example, my file renders as such :
- Time to import your questions to Questionmark!
- As a training administrator, log in to your QuestionMark environment.
- Navigate to Authoring\Topics
- On the left "tree view", select the folder into which you want to import your questions, then right click on the same folder and select import 3rd party questions.
- Use the upload file button to navigate to your .csv file and upload it to the system. A progress bar will appear.
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- If you encounter any errors, the tool usually tells you at which Line it stopped working. Therefore you can delete all prior questions from your file since they were imported successfully, fix your issue and try again.
The tool can take a while to get used to but it saves a lot of time to import your questions from an old platform to Questionmark!
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