Create your Viva Glint Employee Attribute Template
The Employee Attribute Template is a guide and planning tool used to document your organization’s file format and attribute selections, before uploading your employee data to the Microsoft Viva Glint system. This essential step helps our team to know which attributes to expect so your data can be structured and surfaced correctly in reporting.
Ensure that attribute labels that you set up initially stay consistent over time in the Employee Data Files transferred to Viva Glint. For example, if an attribute is set up as Employee ID, it can't later be recognized as the same column renamed as Employee Number.
Note
Use our template as guidance to ensure that data is uploaded in the correct format, incorporating our recommendations and requirements.
To get started on your organization's employee attribute file planning, download the Employee Attribute Template to your device.
Why is creating an employee data template important?
Every report, recommendation, and action plan that is built for your organization relies on the foundation of employee data that you provide. The collection of detailed information about the people in your organization is essential, so we can use cuts of that data to highlight meaningful insights from survey results. In doing that, Viva Glint helps you to determine what you are doing right and where your opportunities lie.
A successful process means that you first need to:
- Understand the definitions and why we ask for attributes and hierarchies
- Use the Employee Attribute Template to format and create your data file
- Understand how to set up and upload your data to Viva Glint
Use your IT department for support
Many companies rely on their IT department to stage and maintain the backend processes that power Viva Glint programs. Your IT department may be the best internal expert when it comes to certain data preparation tasks.
Create the template
These extensions are supported for files exported by your HRIS system:
- .csv for files with a comma delimiter and UTF-8 encoding
- .xlsx for files in Microsoft Excel format with a single tab of data
The first page of the template contains instructions for building your own template. Follow the guidance on the instruction page, the following tabs, and in the following table to set up your template.
Tip
Your template is only the column headers. No employee data is needed at this point.
Definitions for Employee Attribute Template
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| Employee Attribute Template | XLSX guidance for creating your organization’s file format and data selections, before setting up attributes in our platform. |
| Attribute | Demographic details about employees. They're also referred to as filters in the platform. |
| Attribute Header Row | The blueprint of the Employee Attribute Template. It dictates the columns of information and the name labels for the columns. |
| Required Attribute | Information about each employee in your organization that Viva Glint requires to be part of your Employee Attribute Template: |
| Custom Attribute | Any employee information collected in addition to the required attributes. Up to 100 custom attributes can be collected. Examples: birth year, hire date, gender, work location, department. |
| Flat Attribute | A category that can't be broken down further, such as age group or gender. |
| Optional System Attribute | A value that indicates how and when communications are sent to an employee, such as language and time zone. |
| Hierarchy | Filtering down of an employee attribute into levels from highest to lowest, largest to smallest, etc. to provide more precise insights into engagement. Example: Region > Country > State > City |
| Derivation | Other fields configured based on employee attributes. Examples: Age groups can be derived from birth year or tenure can be derived from hire date. |
| Schema | The framework in our platform’s backend, which stores a mapping of your organization’s attributes. |
Next step
After finalizing your attribute selections, reporting hierarchies, and file and date attribute formats, review your employee data with a Viva Glint checklist.