What is a Roster File?
Your roster file is an Excel spreadsheet that tells the platform who will be taking your surveys. For example, student surveys require a roster file that lists each student who will be taking the survey. This allows us to ensure that everyone receives a survey for their correct school, district, or teacher, whichever is the subject of the survey.
Our survey taking process is confidential, so while do use respondent information to create surveys and link responses to different demographic groups in your reports, but we do not show individual responses. One exception is for Student SEL Competency surveys, for which we do provide student-level reports.
Note: Districts and Schools who have integrated with Panorama have ability to utilize our Successports functionality. Successports allows you to load student roster data from Student Success when setting up your survey. Learn more about this functionality in Panorama Academy.
Download a Roster File Template
To ensure that your roster file is automatically understood by our system, we recommend that you download the appropriate roster file template and use that to format your data. If you are not the one who will upload the final file, please download the correct template and send it to your district or school's data team, who can provide you with the correct data to upload. You'll also find these files in the platform (see below).
- Student Surveys:
- Student surveys about the school (SEL Supports or Student Feedback)
- Student surveys about students (SEL Competencies)
- Student surveys about teachers (Student Feedback about the Classroom and Teaching)
- Please note that if you would like students to receive their survey links via email, you must upload Student Emails in these files. You can read more about survey delivery options here.
- Teacher/Staff Surveys:
- Teacher surveys about students (Teacher Perception of Student)
- Teacher and staff surveys about school (Teacher and Staff Feedback or Teacher SEL)
- Family/Guardian Surveys:
- Family surveys about school (Family Feedback)
Data Quality Checklist
While you're preparing your roster file, we encourage you to check out the Roster File Data Quality Checklist, which will walk you through steps that can help clean up your roster file and make sure your data will be uploaded correctly.
Upload Your Roster File
You can use our Rosters Tool to securely upload your student, staff, and family roster files and perform preliminary data integrity checks to ensure a smooth survey administration. In addition to performing an initial review of your data file, this tool minimizes the transfer of sensitive information via email.
You can navigate to the roster upload page through setting up a new survey or using the "Rosters" tab at the top of your page.
Once you’ve selected your Roster upload location, select Choose File and indicate whether you’ll be uploading a XLSX or CSV file. Once you’ve selected your file for upload, you’re ready to map! Mapping columns is required to describe what data is represented in each. Use drop-downs to categorize each of the column titles from your file.
Once your file has been successfully uploaded, you will see a summary of the data from your file. You will want to read through this to make sure that the numbers of schools, students, employees, and family members matches what you expect. This is an important moment to pause and make sure that no one is missing from the file. It is also possible that you may see errors or warnings, which you will want to look into and resolve.
| Errors | Warnings |
| If you see a red error when you upload your file, you must re-upload a corrected file before moving on. Common errors include having the same ID number associated with different individuals or invalid email addresses (may have a space or other typo). | Yellow warning do not require resolution but serve as flags that may require additional review. Common warnings include: students with different ID numbers that have the same name or students enrolled at multiple schools. If these scenarios are expected, the data upload process can continue. |
Note: Educators with Admin access now have ability to opt out and opt in students from a survey administration. Learn more about this functionality in Panorama Academy.
Additional Resources
Use Teacher, Staff and Student Google Passwords to Access Surveys (Google SSO)
If your district assigns Google email accounts, teachers, staff members and students can access and respond to Panorama surveys using their Google passwords (Google single sign-on).
Using Google single sign-on won’t require teachers, staff and students to enter an access code to access surveys. Instead, they can click the provided link and enter their Google password to access a survey.
If you would like to have this feature available, you can reach out to your Panorama project team. To enable Google single sign-on (SSO) for surveys, be sure student emails are imported as the access code in the Student Roster
When teachers, staff and students click the link to the survey, the Google Sign-in appears. After they log in, they can access the available surveys.
If they click Exit or the survey times out, they can enter an access code or their Google password to access the surveys again.
Roster File Guides
Review these roster file guides to learn more about the information that is required by our platform and additional information that may provide additional insights on your reports. Understanding what is required in which column of your data file can help you see around corners and identify areas where you may need more or cleaner data.
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