What Are Properties?

Use Properties to enrich Participant Profiles and narrow your ideal Participant groups for Studies and Panels.

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Written by Sophie
Updated over a week ago

Properties are fields that store important data associated with a person and their research activity, like the data within each spreadsheet column you may be using to track your existing users and prospective research Participants. This data contributes to each person's Participant Profile. Rally offers a variety of Out-the-Box Properties, but you also have the flexibility to create Custom Properties according to your needs.

The data contained within a Property can originate from various sources:

Leverage Properties to save time while optimizing your research efforts and results:

  • Filter and sort for a specific target audience when creating a Study or Panel.

  • Create Segments, which are groups of specific target audiences that can be used repeatedly to run research related to specific demographics of Participants.

Property Types

Rally supports the following Property Types, allowing you to decide what type of data you will be collecting:

  • Text

  • Number

  • Date

  • Single-Select

  • Multi-Select

  • Checkbox

Property Characteristics

Property Characteristics are optional additional toggles that allow you to mark certain data as a unique identifier or mask protected information.

Unique

When the Unique characteristic is enabled, the content of the Property can appear only once. This is useful for usernames or custom identifiers, and for companies where participant emails are unavailable or may not be the preferred unique user identifier.

  • The Unique characteristics can only be set during Property creation.

  • The Unique characteristics cannot be removed after Property creation.

  • Currently, Rally only allows "Text" Property Types to be unique.

  • You can have up to 10 unique properties in one company Workspace.

💡 Email outreach in Rally will not be possible if you don’t track or store email addresses for Participants.

PII

When the PII (Personally Identifiable Information) characteristic is enabled, the content of this Property is masked for Observers and Developers to protect Participants.

PHI

When the PHI (Protected Health Information) characteristic is enabled, the content of this Property is masked for Observers and Developers to protect Participants.

  • These users won’t be able to read, filter, or sort these Properties. Protected Health Information (PHI) is a subset of PII that specifically pertains to any health information linked to an individual's medical history, diagnosis, treatment, or payment for healthcare services. This could include medical records, lab results, insurance information, and even conversations about health conditions.

Rally is in compliance with the HIPAA Security Rule for Properties marked as PHI, and keeps audit logs for when these Properties are read, updated, or deleted. Rally has signed BAAs with all third-party integrations & vendors that process PHI.

💡 Contact Rally to unlock PHI masking for your workspace.

Observer view with masked data

Observer view with masked data


Create and Manage Properties

🚨 Creating or editing Properties requires an Ops Manager or Super Admin role type. Researcher role types can view Properties but do not have edit permissions.

  1. In the top right corner of Rally, select your user icon and select 'Settings'.

  2. From the sidebar, select 'Properties'.

Add New Property

  1. Select '+ New Property'.

  2. Select the appropriate Property Type. More info on Property Types down below.

    • Short Form Text

    • Date

    • Number

    • Single-Select

    • Multi-Select

    • Dropdown

  3. Enter the desired Property Name.

  4. Select any required Characteristics.

    1. Unique: If you select the Text Property Type, you will have an optional additional characteristic choice to make this property "Unique", meaning that the content of the Property can only appear once. This is useful for usernames or custom identifiers, and for companies where emails may not be available or preferred as unique user identifiers. Unique characteristics can only be set during Property creation, and the Unique characteristic cannot be removed after creation.

    2. PII: When the PII (Personally Identifiable Information) characteristic is enabled, the content of this Property is masked for Observers and Developers to protect Participants.

    3. PHI: When the PHI (Protected Health Information) characteristic is enabled, the content of this Property is masked for Observers and Developers to protect Participants.

  5. Depending on the Property Type you select, there may be additional options to set.

    1. Number Property Type:

      1. Optionally, set a Default Value. Records without a value for this Property will receive the default value.

    2. Checkbox Property Type:

      1. Optionally, set a Default Value as "Checked or "Unchecked". Records without a value for this Property will receive the default value.

    3. Single-Select or Multi-Select Property Type:

      1. Provide options for Participants to select from.

      2. Select the three dots to the right of an option to select a Color to display for each option in Rally or to Remove an option.

      3. Select '+ Add New Option' to add more options.

      4. Select '+ Bulk Add New Options' to create multiple options simultaneously by pasting comma-separated values or by typing and pressing enter after each option to save time.

  6. After entering all the necessary information and confirming everything is correct, select 'New Property' to save.

Edit Properties

Ops Managers and Super Admins can edit or update existing Properties as needed.

Note:

  • Properties with the Unique characteristic enabled during creation can not be made non-unique.

  • Out-the-Box Properties are core, pre-defined Properties that cannot have their default configuration edited and contribute to building comprehensive Participant Profiles with values that are automatically updated.

  1. In the top right corner of Rally, select your user icon and select 'Settings'.

  2. From the sidebar, select 'Properties'.

  3. Select the three dots ... to the right of any editable Property and select 'Edit'.

  4. Edit the desired fields:

    • Name

    • Characteristics: Enable or disable PII or PHI masking.

    • Options: For Single-Select or Multi-Select Property Types, optionally edit the included options, or select the three dots ... next to an option to 'Remove' or update the associated color coding.

  5. Select 'Update Property' to save your changes.

Filter and Find Properties

Filter your Properties by "Property Type" or "Created By" to easily narrow your search. From Settings > Properties, select the filter dropdowns at the top and make your selection.


Import and Update Property Data

A person's Property data can be updated in multiple ways. Learn more about each different method and understand how to leverage each one depending on your preferences and various use cases in Import and Update Property Data for Participants.

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