Estimated time to read: 2 - 3 minutes
Before importing data from Excel to Actimo run through this checklist:
Check that you have all the custom fields in Actimo you need (admin > contacts > Contact fields) and that they match with your Excel spreadsheet.
If you are building relationships with your upload also review available relationships (Admin > Contacts > Relationship types) .
Check your contact settings (Admin > Contacts > Manage duplicate contacts). It's important to know these settings, in order to ensure existing contacts are updated correctly and not duplicated. If in doubt, consult Actimo Support in advance.
Make sure your Excel file only includes necessary data that you actually wish to update - i.e. don’t keep columns with name or other data that is not supposed to be updated and make sure you don’t have excessive data in other columns or tabs you don’t need for the upload
Make sure your Excel file has at least one unique identifier field - (one of the fields under Admin > Contacts > Manage duplicate contacts) intended to identify existing contacts and match them with your uploaded data (or create them with this identifier if they are new contacts on your Actimo platform.
Don’t proceed with the upload if you are not confident in any of the above, we recommend that you contact Actimo Support for guidance as Excel uploads may affect your contact database severely if not done correctly.
Create and/or update Contacts via Excel import
Go to Groups and open the Group you wish to add members to.
Click on add members and select import Excel.
Choose the file from disk and select your Excel Spread Sheet.
Map the fields in the drop down menus in Actimo to match your Excel Spread Sheet.
If all of your Contacts have the same phone country code, you can select it for all before importing. If the phone country code is not the same for all contacts, then click in the dropdown menu and select none. Instead, import the different country codes via a column in Excel.
Click on import when you're ready. Actimo will automatically let you know how many new contacts you have created and how many that have been updated.
Import contact data via Excel
1. Go to Contacts > Import Excel and drop or select the file to make it available for upload to Actimo.
You can now preview the top 500 rows of your file, including the headline row (if you have them in the file).
2. Parse the contact fields in Actimo to the correct columns of your file so they match the data you wish to upload/update. If you have mistakenly included more columns than necessary for your upload you can delete them by clicking the bin icon at the bottom of the preview.
3. When you have parsed the fields correctly you can review the few settings at the bottom:
Ignore first row is default ticked and it should be kept ticked if the file has headlines in its first row.
Ignore empty cells is default ticked and it should be kept ticked unless you wish to erase data from the Actimo database deliberately by overwriting them with empty values.
Select default country code has None as the default. It should only be selected if the file does not include phone country codes and you are sure all phone numbers have the same country code.
When you have made sure that:
All fields have been properly parsed to the columns in the file
Only relevant fields with necessary data is present in the file
Settings at the bottom are correct
You can go ahead and click Import X Contacts at the very bottom of the page.
Note that Actimo will be able to detect some apparent errors in your data (invalid email address or phone number formats) and may try to guide you to where the faulty data is located. You could receive an error like so:
In this case, the following email address contains a space which makes the address invalid. This is highlighted in order to help you see which errors should be resolved:
We recommend to not proceed with a data import that contains errors as it will corrupt your database and potentially cause issues with basic functions in Actimo such as access for employees or message notifications.
Even if Actimo can find potential errors like the one in the example above, it’s crucial that data is well reviewed and verified before uploading to Actimo.
For data protection reasons, make sure that you handle Excel files with data according to your companies policies at all times. Never send files with any personal data to Actimo Support or other instances in Kahoot.
Populate Groups via Excel
Actimo can populate groups with contacts from Excel files. Note that a group populated with an excel file becomes a manual group and will have to be maintained manually. Please always consider to create groups with smart rules where possible.
The ground rule here is to only include strictly necessary data within the excel for creating the group and to avoid creating new contacts while performing this group population process (which is technically possible).
The necessary data when creating groups is a unique identifier data and this parameter can be determined in Admin > Contacts > Managing duplicated contacts. It will look something like this:
In the case of the image above, you can use one of the following data fields to create groups:
Employee ID
Phone country code + mobile number
Email address
This means that you should only include one data column in your Excel file for upload and it must be one of the ones that has been set to serve as a unique identifier as in the example above. The data must be an exact match to include the right contact in the group. If the data doesn’t match, Actimo will create an entirely new contact instead.
You can start with creating a manual group and name it before you populate it, and then doing the Excel upload. Alternatively, you can create it directly by choosing Import Excel when viewing the Groups list. The following example populates an existing group:
1. Go to the group you wish to populate and select Import Excel under Add members. Drop or select the file to make it available for upload to Actimo.
You can now preview the top 500 rows of your file, including the headline row (if you have them in the file).
2. Parse the contact field(s) in Actimo to the correct column(s) of your file so they match the data you wish to upload/update. If you have mistakenly included more columns than necessary for your upload you can delete them by clicking the bin icon at the bottom of the preview.
3. When you have parsed the fields correctly, you can review the few settings at the bottom:
Ignore first row is default ticked and it should be kept ticked if the file has headlines in its first row.
Ignore empty cells is default ticked and it should be kept ticked unless you wish to erase data from the Actimo database deliberately by overwriting them with empty values.
Select default country code has None as the default. It should only be selected if the file does not include phone country codes and you are sure all phone numbers have the same country code.
When you have made sure that:
All fields have been properly parsed to the columns in the file
Only relevant fields with necessary data is present in the file
Settings at the bottom are correct
You can go ahead and click Import X contacts at the very bottom of the page.
When the import is complete you will get a short report of the upload to assess if the numbers you see here are the expected ones.
Contacts updated typically means that the contacts were successfully added to the group. In this case the upload has created a new contact in Actimo which was not expected, therefore the Admin should in this case click on Go to group to review it and investigate the unexpected addition.
Tags: groups, membership, smart groups, excel, import, contacts, several groups
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