Importing Members from CSV
Preparing Your Data
After setting up your member types you will likely want to add your members to the list of members. The easiest way to do this is to import them from a CSV (Comma Separated Value) file. CSV is a very common file format type that Excel and most other spreadsheet applications can export their data to.
No Comma’s in the CSV
There are some caveats for the CSV data that you need to adhere to in order to have a successful import. First and most importantly is that you cannot have any comma’s in your data, even if the data is quoted. Here is an example:
Comma’s in the data is by far the most common caveat that we see happening when new users are importing data for the first time.
Header Row
The first row of the data needs to be a header row. This is because this is used during the CSV import mapping step:
Here you can see we always consider the first row to be a header, and display the header (replacing spaces with underscores) in the CSV Column.
Add Appropriate Member Types
If you do not provide a member type the import members won’t have one set. In order to fix this now, go to your member types table, click on the gear icon button next to the Create button, in the columns dialog turn on the “ID” column, then close the columns dialog. You should now be able to see the internal ID’s for the member types.
Go to your CSV file (or back to your Excel file) and add a column named “member type” and set the appropriate internal ID for each member type to each member.
Date Formatting
Our system maintains 3 dates for each member. Their join date, their expiration date, and their updated date. During an import, if any of these dates are not provided, the system will use the current date. If you know what you want these dates to be set to, you can provide that in the CSV, however the date needs to be in ISO standard date format. This format is YYYY-MM-DD, so January 12, 2020 would appear as 2020-01-12. If the date cannot be interpreted, the current date will be used.
IDs
If you want to import your members IDs as part of the data, you can, however the IDs must be number, no letters, spaces, or any other characters, and each number must be unique. If you do not provide an ID the system will start assigning IDs sequentially starting from the next available ID number.
Start Importing
If you have gone through the preparation, as described above, you should be ready to import your data. To begin, click on the “Import” icon above the members table
The import dialog will apper
Click on “Choose File” or drag and drop your members CSV file into the area at the top where it says “Drop Files Here”. The system will run a pre-process on the data to try and determine if there are any potential issues with the CSV file.
Mapping Columns
The next really important step is to link your CSV columns to the database columns. This is done by selecting the appropriate Member Data for the source columns from the CSV.
After a Member Data has been mapped to a CSV Column, it will not be selectable for other CSV Columns.
If you make a mistake and want to un-map columns, just select a different Member Data item to map the CSV data to.
Repeat this process until all the CSV Columns are mapped to an appropriate Member Data item.
With phone numbers, our system can be used to send test messages to members. If you plan to use this feature you will need to specify which phone number the system should use for your members when sending a text message (usually a mobile number). If you know what phone numbers in your CSV file are mobile and which ones are not, we recommend separating them into 2 columns, one for mobile and one for other, and when linking columns link the mobile number to the “Mobile” target.
When you have completed mapping all the columns, click the “Import” button.
The importing process will begin. During the import the system will try to determine if you already have a member in your database for each row you are importing. It tries to match on member id, mobile number, and name. If it finds a matching member, it will update the member with the data from the CSV, if it does not find a match it will create a new member with the data. When it is done the system will report how many members were created and how many were updated.