By Vellora Labs · Reviewed October 12, 2026
Start a research repository with a question your team needs to answer and a small set of material it is allowed to use. A migration succeeds when people can retrieve the right evidence, understand its limits and respect the original permissions.
Inventory before importing.
Choose a pilot set, such as one study’s guide, notes, recordings and decision summary. Record what exists, who owns it, where the original lives, what reuse is allowed and when it should be reviewed or deleted. Separate missing consent from missing metadata; neither is fixed by placing the file in a new tool.
Keep participant identity keys outside the shared repository when they are unnecessary for analysis. Make access decisions before inviting reviewers. A searchable transcript may reveal more information than a short clip did in the previous workflow.
A minimum record that stays useful
| Field | Practical purpose |
|---|---|
| Study and decision | Explains why the material was collected. |
| Source ID and location | Connects a statement to a recording, note or response. |
| Audience and experience | Documents whose perspective the source represents. |
| Question and stimulus version | Preserves the conditions that shaped the answer. |
| Reuse and retention | Identifies permitted audiences and review or deletion dates. |
| Finding state | Distinguishes a draft interpretation from a reviewed conclusion. |
Pilot a retrieval task.
Give an authorized colleague a question that the pilot set can answer. Ask them to locate both supporting and contradictory evidence, open the original context, and explain the finding’s scope. Observe broken references, unclear labels, duplicate material and permission failures.
Use a second question that the material cannot answer. The desired outcome is recognition of the gap. An apparently confident answer without a source is a failed retrieval outcome, even if the prose reads well.
Check the migration in both directions.
- Compare a small sample of original files with imported versions: speaker labels, timestamps, transcript corrections and attachments.
- Open a source reference from a finding and verify the correct passage.
- Test access using the intended reviewer role, not just an administrator.
- Export the pilot record and confirm it retains the references your team needs.
- Test deletion with a disposable fixture and inspect linked excerpts or derived outputs under the provider’s actual behavior.
Document what did and did not transfer. Keep original sources until the migration checks and your retention decisions are resolved. Avoid creating an uncontrolled extra archive as a permanent fallback.
Choose software after the pilot requirements are clear.
Dovetail describes source-linked answers and project material; Looppanel describes research search and sharing clips and reports. Those official descriptions, checked October 12, 2026, identify candidates to evaluate. They do not establish that either product meets your export, permissions or deletion requirements.
Compare workflows in our analysis tools guide. For a small study, start with the evidence log and an agreed access policy. Define an owner for metadata, corrections and periodic review before expanding the collection.
Publish a decision summary with its limits.
A useful handoff explains the decision, evidence, opposing examples and unresolved questions. If that research informs a product video, use the research-to-story guide to keep the message within the evidence. TapVid is our team’s product video tool, not a research repository.