Bulk Importing Questionnaires

Questionnaires in Bonfire are a way for buyers to receive vendor responses for a large number of criteria while displaying the Vendor's responses side-by-side. (To learn more about Questionnaires, see our What is a Questionnaire and when should I use one? page.)

It is possible to bulk import the content of your Questionnaires so that you don't have to manually input your Questions into the system one by one.

Step 1

1. Click the Bulk Import Questions button on the page with your Questionnaire:

2. If this is your first time ever bulk importing, click the Download Template button to download an Excel template. The template will contain example information and/or instructions that should be removed as needed.

3. Type or copy and paste your Questions in to match the template layout.

Tips for completing the template:

Your data must contain at least three (3) columns with at least one (1) value inputted into each column:

• Question Set - You may choose to have just one main Question Set, or you may want to break down your Questionnaire into multiple different Question Sets. Think of them as categories for your questions to be sorted into. There must be at least one Question Set in a Questionnaire.
• Question - Before setting off, you will need to have a list of questions that you wish for the Vendors to respond to. When we say 'question', we mean a piece of information you wish to gather from your Vendors. These questions can be used to simply gather information or can be scored directly.
• Points - Set the maximum point value for the question. If you would like to mark a question as “Info Only”, then set the point value for that question to zero (0).

You may also include any of the following optional columns:

• Scoring Instructions - The scoring instructions are only visible internally (i.e. not visible to vendors) and can be used to advise evaluators on how to score the question.
• Subset - If you want to further divide your Question Sets into smaller increments (for scoring reasons, organization, etc.) you can also assign questions to a specific Question Subset. This means that you can have even more specific categories in which to sort questions, within a Question Set. 
• Vendor Response Options - For each question, indicate any possible answers a vendor can select as a comma-separated list. For example, “True, False” or “Yes, No”. This field cannot begin with an equals sign (=) nor a single quotation mark (‘). If this column is included in your bulk import, you must also include ‘Response Options Comment Requirements’.
• Response Option Score Percentages - Set these values to predefine auto-scoring calculations. They can be blank, or a comma-separated string with a value for every Vendor Response Option on a given question. Each value must be a number between 0 and 100.
• Response Option Comment Requirements - Must be included with ‘Vendor Response Options’. For each possible response to a question, indicate the comment requirements as a comma-separated list. Comment requirements include “Required”, “Optional”, and “Not Allowed”. There must be a comment requirement for each response option on a given question.
• Instructions - Enter any additional instructions for the question set. These will be displayed to the vendors in the template.

NOTE: Commas (,) and tildes (~) are ‘special’ characters - avoid using them in the text of your Questionnaire. For example, “yes, I agree” will cause an error.

4. Once all of your Questions are properly formatted, just copy and paste the entire Questionnaire into the large text box on the Bulk Import screen. Make sure to check the box next to My data has headers accordingly. Click the Next Step button when done.

Step 2

You will then see a table of your imported data. Use the drop-down menus for each column to correctly label the content of each column. (If you have selected "My data has headers", then this matching should be done for you automatically.)

After all columns have been properly labeled, select Import at the Bottom right-hand corner of the screen. If there are any errors in your data, you will be prompted to fix them before the Questionnaire will be able to be created.

Once you've imported your questions, you may also want to set up some Criteria so that your Evaluators know they have to score it. For instructions on that, see our How do I map my Questionnaire to Criteria? page.

To learn more about Questionnaires check out our guide on creating a Questionnaire by clicking here.