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If you’re importing data from Recollective or Incling, check out these articles. The segments will be brought in immediately!
Segments allow you to group research participants by customer type, demographic, market or other factors to enable filters and comparisons during analysis. You can apply segments manually, or import an Excel Sheet with screener questionnaire data.

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Manual entry:

  1. In the Segments & Participants tab, tick the participants you want. Every speaker in the project is listed, confirmed or not.
  2. Click Add segments in the bar that appears at the bottom of the screen (it is also under Actions, ⌘K, Ctrl+K on Windows).
  3. Tick a segment to apply it to everyone selected. A dash means only some of them carry it; ticking again gives it to all.
  4. To create a segment, type a name that doesn’t exist yet (e.g. “Region: UK”, “Age: 18-24”). It is created and applied in one step.
  5. If filenames contain metadata (e.g., “Interview_UK_Youth”), filter by keyword first to segment everyone matching at once.
The same menu renames participants, sets their role, merges duplicates, and removes every segment from the selection. Each action shows its shortcut, so once you know them you can press the key instead: S for segments, R to rename, ⇧R for roles, M to merge.

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Merging speakers

A speaker belongs to the file it was found in, so one person interviewed five times is five rows here. Tick the rows and choose Merge speakers (M) to combine them, then pick which one to keep. A merge cannot be undone, so the dialog says how many turns across how many files will move. Outputs generated before the merge keep the old names until you regenerate them. When the same confirmed name appears in several files, Merge duplicates in the tab’s toolbar merges all of them at once. It lists every name that repeats (with the same role), each with the number of speakers and files involved; uncheck any you want to keep apart, then merge. Unconfirmed speakers are left out until you confirm them, and the button only appears while something repeats. Turn on Group by file to read the table the other way round, each file listing the speakers found in it.

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From AI chat:

The AI chat can suggest segments and sort every participant into them for you. Say if you want one segment per participant (e.g. “split participants into…”) or segments that can overlap; otherwise the chat picks what fits.
  1. Ask the chat for segments, e.g. “Suggest segments for how often participants drink coffee and when in the day they drink it”.
  2. Under the answer, find Suggested segments. Each kind of segment has its own row, e.g. “Coffee frequency”.
  3. Optionally, click a row’s name to see how each participant was grouped.
  4. Click Add on the row you want. A window lists the segments each participant will get.
  5. Click × on any segment that doesn’t fit to leave it out.
  6. Click Add segments.
  7. Click View to open the Segments & Participants tab, where you can change any participant’s segments.

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Excel import:

  • Upload an Excel sheet containing columns for names and demographic fields.
  • CoLoop matches participant names and populates segment data (e.g., gender, location, cohort).
  • Ensure names in the Excel sheet exactly match those in CoLoop.
  • Click + Import data
  • Select the Excel option
  • Click ‘Process Community Data’
  • Click the “Segment” tick box for any columns that correspond to a segment
  • Click ‘Import community data’

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Spreadsheet upload:

To segment participants who are already in the project from a spreadsheet, such as your recruitment grid, use the icons in the Segments column header of the Segments & Participants tab.
  1. Prepare a spreadsheet with a column of participant names and a column for each segment. To start from a list of your participants, click the download icon for a template.
  2. Click the upload icon and drop the file.
  3. Choose the name column.
  4. Tick the segment columns.
  5. Click Upload Segments.
CoLoop matches each row to a participant by name. Make sure names in the spreadsheet match those in CoLoop. A File name column, as in the template, is recognized automatically and used to tell apart participants who share a name. If a name matches more than one participant (e.g. “Sarah” in two focus groups) and nothing else tells them apart, CoLoop asks you to choose before adding anything. Each option lists the files that participant appears in. You can also skip the row.

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Using segments

Segment data can be used to filter data when creating grids, chats, and reels. In an analysis grid you can also build rows from segments to analyze cross-sections of your data.
  • Click + Add filter
  • Tick the segment you’d like to apply
  • Close the menu to apply them