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Jonas Breder edited this page Oct 27, 2026 · 64 revisions

HROOT - Hamburg Registration and Organization Online Tool

Welcome to the documentation for HROOT (Hamburg Registration and Organization Tool) — a web-based recruitment and management platform for experimental research laboratories and academic institutions.

Note

This documentation covers HROOT Version 4.0, including Docker-based deployment, Shibboleth SAML Single Sign-On, online survey integrations, dynamic site settings, staff scheduling, flexible payments, and multi-pool support.

Table of Contents

  1. What is HROOT?
  2. Getting help and reporting bugs

1. What is HROOT?

HROOT is a web-based software for the organization and management of experiments, experimenters, and participants. It is developed by the WiSo Research Laboratory of the Universität Hamburg (WiSo Forschungslabor). If you have questions that go beyond this wiki documentation, please feel free to contact us at the Universität Hamburg. Contact technical staff in charge of support: hroot.wiso@uni-hamburg.de.

You can install and use HROOT for free; the program can be licensed free of charge. To receive the software, download the HROOT license agreement on our homepage (Universität Hamburg – HROOT Project) and send us four completely filled and signed copies via postal service to the following address:

Universität Hamburg
Faculty of Business, Economics and Social Sciences
WiSo Research Laboratory
Von-Melle-Park 5
20146 Hamburg, Germany

When you report results of experiments administered with HROOT, the license requires that you mention its use in your publication and cite our paper. The correct citation is:

The experiment was organized and recruited with the software HROOT (Bock, Olaf, Ingmar Baetge & Andreas Nicklisch, 2014).

Reference:

Bock, Olaf, Ingmar Baetge & Andreas Nicklisch (2014). hroot – Hamburg registration and organization online tool. European Economic Review 71, 117–120.

HROOT is implemented with Ruby on Rails, a powerful web development framework.

2. Getting help and reporting bugs

Please contribute your experience using HROOT by sending us emails or contacting us in case of problems.

If you find bugs or have an idea for a feature, please use the GitHub issue tracker for this project: GitHub Issues. You can also send us an email via hroot.wiso@uni-hamburg.de.

HROOT - Hamburg Registration and Organization Online Tool

  1. Installation

    1. System Requirements and Prerequisites

    2. Docker (precompiled)

    3. Docker (self-compiled)

    4. Manual Deployment

    5. First steps after installation

    6. Backup and Maintenance

    7. Starting a local server and running automated tests

    8. Basic configuration

    9. Language configuration and timezone

    10. Custom field definitions

  2. Updating an existing installation

  3. Overview

    1. Roles: Users, Admins, Experimenters, Banking‐Administrators
    2. Experiments, Sessions, session types
    3. Monitoring, Dashboards and Reporting

  4. Subject pool and user management

    1. Pools Management
    2. Browsing the pool
    3. Exporting data
    4. Adding users
    5. Deleting users
    6. Finding duplicate users
    7. More user management

  5. Experiment management

    1. Managing Experiments
    2. Procedures (Ablaufpläne)
    3. Adding Sessions
    4. Experiment and Session Inheritance
    5. Assign participants from the pool
    6. Inviting participants
    7. Invitations Scheduling and Digests
    8. Session management
    9. Waiting list
    10. Admission

  6. Sending messages

    1. Invitation emails
    2. Confirmation emails
    3. Session reminder emails
    4. SMS and Push Notifications

  7. Managing your lab

    1. Calendar and Room Booking
    2. Staff Management
    3. Finance

  8. Settings

    1. Environment Configuration
    2. Default locale and date formats
    3. Shibboleth Integration
    4. Kimai Integration

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