Once your recruitment study is set up and recruiting, participants reach it in two main ways: you build a recruitment pool from the study, or they apply online. This article covers both, how the statuses move, how to review what arrives, and how to hand a participant over to the clinical side.
Step | What happens | Section |
1. Bring participants in | Create a recruitment pool from the study (recommended), or share the online application link. | Build a recruitment pool and contact it; Take applications online |
2. Let the statuses move | An invitation makes participants Contacted, logging in to start the questionnaire makes them Interested, and the questionnaire result makes them Pre-Qualified or Disqualified. | Read the application statuses |
3. Decide who becomes Qualified | Choose how Pre-Qualified becomes Qualified: a platform default, adjustable for one study. | Choose how Pre-Qualified becomes Qualified |
4. Review and follow | Filter by status, read the pre-screening answers, and save views for the groups you follow every day. | Review the applications that arrive |
5. Hand over to the clinical side | Pull Qualified or Enrolled participants into an EDC study. | Move a participant into a clinical study |
Build a recruitment pool and contact it
This is the route we recommend. You start from the study and send the study details to a prefiltered slice of your contacts. The filters, history and logs stay under the study, so you can open the pool and follow it from first contact onward.
🛠️ Step by step guide
Navigate to Recruitment Studies and open the study.
Click + Add Participants.
Apply filters matching your study criteria.
Select the rows you want.
Click Select (n) Participants.
Enter a Recruitment Pool Name, so you can identify this search later.
Choose the Communication Channel and write the message.
Click Create a Recruitment Pool.
Every participant of the pool gets an application row, and its status then depends on what you chose and on what the participant does:
Contacted: you invited them by email or SMS when you created the pool.
Prospect: you chose no invitation. Switch them to Contacted yourself once you have contacted them.
Interested: the participant clicked the study link and logged in to start the questionnaire.
Disqualified: automatic, when the participant picks an answer option that you marked as disqualifying in the recruitment questionnaire.
Pre-Qualified: the participant completed the questionnaire without being disqualified. What happens next depends on the transition mode, covered below.
🛠️ Step by step guide
Edit an existing pool
Click Recruitment pool in the page header, next to + Add Participants, as shown below.
Click the pool you want to change, and follow the same steps to review, modify or duplicate it.
⚠️ Warning: deleting a pool does not delete the applications it created. They stay on the study dashboard. If you want them gone too, select those rows and delete them yourself.
Assigning subjects directly from the Subject Database
You can also select subjects in the Subject Database and assign them straight to a recruitment study. We usually do not advise it, because a pool is clearer: you can open it and follow it from the study. It remains available when you only need to attach a few known subjects, and the recruitment study status must be Recruiting.
🛠️ Step by step guide
Navigate to Subject Database.
Apply filters matching your study criteria, then select the rows you want.
Click Assign to Recruitment Study.
Search for and select the recruitment study, then select the Center.
Choose the Application Status to apply, Active or Inactive, and decide whether to send the automatic email invitation.
Click Submit.
An application row appears on the recruitment study dashboard waiting for your review, with the center and status you chose already applied.
Take applications online from new contacts
Beyond your existing contacts, you can publish the study and receive applications from people who are not in your database at all.
🔑 Prerequisite: the recruitment study's online landing page is configured.
What you share is a QR code, or the hyperlink behind it.
🛠️ Step by step guide
Navigate to Recruitment Studies and open the study.
Open the Settings tab.
Go to the QR Code page.
Click Copy, using the icon shown below.
Share the QR code or link wherever you need it: your website, social media, or printed material.
An interested person applies from the landing page and has to give a valid email address. If that address already exists in your database they are asked to log in; if it does not, they create a profile. From there the statuses behave the same as for a pool: Interested when they log in and start the questionnaire, then Pre-Qualified or Disqualified from the questionnaire result.
Read the application statuses
These definitions describe the most standard way the platform is used. Your staff can change a status by hand at any time and adapt the meanings to your own process. The automatic transitions stay active regardless, and in most cases cannot be customized.
Status | What it means |
Prospect | Added to the study through a pool or through Assign to Recruitment Study, with no invitation sent. Your staff switch them to Contacted by hand once they have contacted the participant. |
Contacted | Invited by email or SMS when the pool was created, or switched by hand after your staff contacted them. You are waiting for a reply. |
Interested | Clicked the study link and logged in to start the questionnaire. |
Pre-Qualified | Completed the recruitment questionnaire without being disqualified, but not yet moved to Qualified. How and when that happens depends on the transition mode, explained below this table. |
Qualified | Eligible to take part in the study. Reached from Pre-Qualified, either automatically or by hand depending on the transition mode. If Pre-Qualified is skipped, participants reach Qualified as long as they are not disqualified during the questionnaire, whether or not they booked a visit. |
Enrolled | Attended the first visit and is officially in the study. |
Completed | Finished every visit the protocol requires. |
Disqualified | Ineligible, or unavailable to join. Set automatically when the participant picks an answer option marked as disqualifying in the recruitment questionnaire. |
Not Interested | Told you they do not want to take part. Set by hand. |
Excluded | Set by hand for a participant who is excluded during the study: was Qualified or even Enrolled, but can no longer continue the protocol. |
Choose how Pre-Qualified becomes Qualified
A transition mode decides what happens once an applicant reaches Pre-Qualified. Set a default once for the whole platform, so you do not have to configure each study. Then override it for an individual study only when that study has a specific need.
Transition mode | What happens |
Manual only | No automatic promotion. A user with the right permissions moves participants from Pre-Qualified to Qualified by hand. |
On booked visit | Participants move to Qualified automatically as soon as they book a visit marked as qualifying. |
Skip Pre-Qualified | The Pre-Qualified status is not used. Participants move straight to Qualified as long as they are not disqualified during the questionnaire, whether or not they booked a visit. |
🛠️ Step by step guide
Set the platform default
Go to Settings, then Statuses under the Recruitment section of the sidebar.
Under Transition modes, select the mode for From Pre-qualified to Qualified.
Click Save.
🛠️ Step by step guide
Override the default for one study
Open the recruitment study and go to its Settings tab.
Under Optional Settings, open Statuses. By default the study follows the platform default, marked Default on the page.
Switch from Use default values to Override.
Select the mode this study needs, then click Save.
To change the platform default from there, click Edit default settings.
Review the applications that arrive
Applications reach your dashboard from any of the routes above. A few controls do most of the work of deciding who to call first.
🛠️ Step by step guide
Filter by status
Click the colored status flow in the top bar.
Review what comes back and decide the next step.
Show database and pre-screening answers
Click the variables icon shown below.
Choose whether to include database variables, pre-screening survey responses, or both.
Use the answers on screen to decide who is worth calling back.
💡 Tip: you cannot filter on the answers once they are displayed. If you need to filter or sort on them, export to Excel and work there.
Save a view to follow a group of participants
If you check the same combination of filters regularly, save it as a view. A view is a tab next to All with its own live participant count, which updates as records change, so you no longer need to track it in Excel.
🛠️ Step by step guide
In the study's participant list, click the + next to the tabs to create a new view.
Click Add filter and combine the filters you need: Status, Center, Recruitment pool, Availability date, Visit, Visit Status, Account status, Study, or any of your pre-screening questions.
Click Save for everyone. Click Reset instead to drop your changes.
To rename, duplicate or delete a view, open the ⋮ menu on its tab.
Who can manage views depends on the role, under Recruitment, in the Recruitment permission. Users with Access can see the views and switch between them. Users with Edit can also create, rename, edit, duplicate and delete them. Use Duplicate to start a new view from an existing one instead of rebuilding its filters. These are the views teams build most often:
You want to follow | Filters to combine |
Everyone in one pool who still needs a call | Recruitment pool and Status (for example Prospect or Contacted) |
Participants waiting to be promoted to Qualified | Status set to Pre-Qualified, plus Center to split by site |
Who still has to attend a visit, for example the screening visit | Visit and Visit Status (Scheduled, Completed, Cancelled or Not done) |
People whose answer to a pre-screening question matches your criteria | The pre-screening question itself, combined with Status |
⚠️ Warning:
Views are shared across all users of the study.
If several users edit the same view, the latest version is the one applied.
Deleting a view deletes it for all users of the recruitment study and cannot be undone. A confirmation message asks you first.
Views do not compare their counts with your recruitment target yet. For that overview, use the recruitment funnel at the top of the page.
Move a participant into a clinical study
If your platform has both modules, you can pull participants from a recruitment study straight into an EDC study, without retyping anybody. On the EDC study's Subjects page, the blue + offers a From recruitment tab listing the participants of the linked recruitment study.
🔑 Prerequisite: three things have to be true, and they are set in three different places.
The recruitment study status is Recruiting.
The EDC study status is Live.
The recruitment study's settings carry an EDC link pointing at that EDC study.
Only participants at Qualified or Enrolled appear in that tab. Participants still at Pre-Qualified are not listed; they need to reach Qualified first, whether automatically or by hand, as explained earlier in this article. For the full procedure on the clinical side, see Include a subject and open their eCRF.
💡 Tip: if the From recruitment tab shows nothing, the usual cause is the EDC link never being set in the recruitment study's settings. That link is invisible from the EDC side, so check it from the recruitment study.