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Add, remove and edit attributes and segments

Set up your attributes and segments

What are attributes and segments?

In Eletive, attributes and segments define how your organization and reports are structured.

- An attribute is a category used to group users based on a shared characteristic.
Examples: Department, Location, Manager, or Gender.

- A segment is a group within that category, in other words, a report based on one specific value of the attribute.
Examples: Within the attribute Department, segments could be HR, IT, and Production.

Each user can belong to only one segment per attribute (for example, one department, one manager, and one gender), but can belong to multiple attributes at the same time.
Example: A user can belong to Department: HR, Location: Sweden, and Manager: Lisa Andersson.

You can manage your attributes under Settings → Attributes (in other words, go to Settings and then select Attributes in the left-hand menu).

Here, you can:
- Add or remove attributes and segments (you can also add segments through a mass edit; detailed instructions for this process are provided later in this article.)
- Change their names

Why are attributes and segments important?

Attributes and segments determine how your survey results are grouped and displayed in reports.
For example, if you have the attribute Department, Eletive will automatically create one report for each department segment (HR, IT, Production, etc.).
This allows you to compare engagement and insights between groups.


Standard vs Custom attributes/segments

Eletive includes a set of Standard attributes that are automatically available in all accounts — for example Employment type, Gender, Manager, Date of Birth, Termination date, and Country.

These attributes serve as a helpful starting point when setting up your organization in Eletive.
They provide examples of common ways to group users and help you kickstart your reporting structure without starting from scratch.

If an attribute or segment is standard, you’ll see a “Standard” label next to its name.
If any of the standard attributes are not relevant for your organization, you can simply remove, rename or deactivate them under Settings → Attributes to keep your structure clean and focused.

In addition to the standard ones, you can create Custom attributes and segments that reflect your unique organizational setup — for example Division, Office, Team, or Region.
Custom attributes give you full flexibility to define how your reports should be grouped and viewed, ensuring that your insights align with your actual organizational structure and follow-up process.

attribute standard_custom

standard attribute

Types of attributes

There are 4 different types of attributes, and each type responds to different data types. It is important to select a relevant attribute type that matches the data that will be added. If utilizing standard attributes and segments the type is automatically selected. 

Choices

The choices attribute is a text attribute normally used to set up organizational structures, such as countries, departments, units, groups, teams etc.

Dates

The date attribute categorizes users/answers based on the date of today compared to the date in the employee data. This attribute type is normally used for “hire date”, “birth date”, “separation date” to automatically calculate segments for ranges such as “new hires 0-3 months employment”, “age 20-30 years”, “offboarding” etc. Future dates can also be utilized by activating the "Segment on future dates" parameter under edit. To change the date intervals, press the Edit dates button.

Numbers

The numbers attribute categorizes users/answers based on the numbers in the employee data. This data can be used for example on Salary to define salary range segments.

Users

The users attribute categorizes users based on people structures, such as manager structures. This attribute type is optimized for organizations that work with manager/people connections instead of, or as a complement to, choice attributes or set departments/teams. It's normally used when you have a unique manager/person connected to each employee in the employee data (like in Microsoft Entra ID (formerly Microsoft Azure Active Directory)). The users/answers are attached to a specific manager/user in Eletive, such as a manager “Lisa”, and not to an organizational department segment such as “HR”.

When using this attribute type, hierarchies are automatically built and maintained. Manager access is also automatically maintained. The user will be able to access all segments that are the user's own segments as well as all segments below them in the hierarchy.

attribute type user

Managers/users that have other users connected to them will have two segments, one "All" and one "Direct" segment. Read more about the difference between the All and Direct segments here.

Creating a Standard attribute

To add a new standard attribute

  1. Click on Settings in the navigation menu
  2. Click on Attributes
  3. Click the "Add attribute" button
  4. Select "Standard attribute"
  5. Select which standard attribute you wish to create. Only the available standard attributes will be shown
  6. Under the "Segments section" that appears after selecting an attribute in step 5, select which standard segments you wish to include
  7. Press the "Create" button

Creating a Custom attribute

To add a new custom attribute

  1. Click on Settings in the navigation menu
  2. Click on Attributes
  3. Click the "Add attribute" button
  4. Click on "Custom attribute"
  5. Select one attribute type
  6. Enter the name of the attribute
  7. Click the "Create" button

Managing attributes

To edit the name on an attribute

  1. Choose the attribute you want to change the name of
  2. Click on the edit icon 
  3. Change the name of the attribute and click on Save

To remove an attribute

  1. Select the Attribute you want to remove
  2. Click on the “Delete” button

Convert a Custom attribute to a Standard attribute

If you have a custom attribute that corresponds to one of the standard attributes, you can convert it to a standard attribute. 

  1. Choose the attribute you want to convert to a standard attribute
  2. Click on the "edit" icon
  3. Select "Convert to standard attribute"
  4. If you want to keep the current attribute and segments names, enable the switch called "Keep attribute and segment name". 
  5. Select the standard attribute
  6. Map which current segment that belongs to which standard segment
  7. Once finished, press "Convert to standard attribute"

Managing Segments

To add a segment manually  

  1. Click on Settings in the navigation menu
  2. Click on the Attributes tab
  3. Click on one of the attributes
  4. Click "Add segment"
  5. Select "Standard segment" or "Custom segment"
    • For "Standard segment" select one of the predefined segments
    • For "Custom segment" enter your segment name in the text field
  6. Press "Create segment"

To edit a segment

  1. Click on one of the attributes
  2. Click on the three dots in the Actions column 
  3. Go to "Edit"
  4. Change the name of the segment and click on Save
  5. Optional: add aliases. Read more about this here: Segment Aliases 

To remove a segment

  1. Click on one of the attributes
  2. Click on the trash icon next to the segment you want to remove

Add segment by mass edit

    Segments are automatically added if they do not exist when uploading a file with users.

    Change a user’s attribute or segment

    1. Click on Settings in the navigation menu
    2. Click on Users
    3. Select the employee you want to edit
    4. Under the Attributes heading, find the right attribute you want to edit and select a new segment