Our import system is set to help you import your contacts and their properties to Connectif via CSV file or with a simple copy & paste method.
The most common import uses are:
- First import from another platform or system.
- Update of our contact's data.
We'll teach you how to do some of these actions in this article.
Before starting
Some necessary details before we start with this process:
- If needed, have a CSV file at hand with all the contacts that will be imported.
- Certain fields, such as dates and phones, have to be in their appropriate format. Dates have to be in ISO 8601 yyyy-mm-dd (year-month-day); phones can go with our without their international code. With code: +34651234567; without code: 651234567.
Also, the fields that are of the type phone, date, integer, decimal or radio can't be empty. That means, if we're importing contacts with phone number, that field can't be empty on that same file. - The only mandatory field for Connectif is the email field, since it's unique and can't be use by two contacts at once. The other fields are optional.
New contact import
This process has two phases: the first one involves the preparation of the CSV file with all the contacts we want to import to Connectif; after that, comes the import process in Connectif.
Preparing the import
If you already have your CSV file ready, you can skip this part.
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In an Excel or Google Sheets spreadsheet, open a new file.
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In the first column, create a tag for the field "email". As previously said, that's the only mandatory field.
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After that, add as many columns with tags as fields you want to import to Connectif. If the fields that you want to import don't exist in your account, you'll have to create them as custom fields, as explained in the article about contact fields.
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Copy the respective information in each column and save the CSV in a format separated by comma.
If you need more information about CSV format exportation, you can check these articles with tips from Excel and Google Sheet.
Importing to Connectif
You can access the import feature from "Contacts > See All > Import".
Step 1: Select Source
At this step, we'll select the CSV file that we want to import from our system. Alternatively, you can import by copying and pasting in the central text box, but this option is more limited, since it doesn't allow a great number of contacts. Also, keep in mind that the emails are unique for each user and shouldn't be repeated, since it could cost inconsistencies in the importation process.
We can also indicate if the CSV file has a header with names for each column, as well as the delimiter.
Lastly, in the bottom half we have three checkboxes that allow you to:
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Override existing: If there is a contact that already has an email attached and you want to update the fields that are already filled by overriding them. If it's a first time import, you don't have to check it, since all the contacts will be new.
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Update only empty fields: If we're overriding, this option makes it so that only the empty fields will get updated.
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Add to segment: We can add the imported contacts to a particular static segment that was previously created.
Step 2: Select the fields to import
At this point, we'll do the mappings for the fields that appear in the CSV file that have a match within our Connectif account.
In the left, we have the columns from the imported CSV file that Connectif has already processed. In the right, we have our contact fields that are already part of the system. The goal in this step is to associate the imported columns with their respective fields. There is no need to fill all the spaces, just the ones we are most interested in. The only mandatory association is the one involving the email field.
There is a special value in the upper left column called Literal. You can use this value to simulate that a column is being imported, so it doesn't need to be in the CSV file. When we drop this value in one of the fields on the right, a small editor will appear that will let us assign the value that we want in that particular field. So, for example, if write 10 in the Points field, that means that every imported contact will have 10 points in their profile when the process is finished.
When everything is done, we can start the import process.
Step 3: Import and Summary
At last, in this page we can see the import as it happens. When it reaches 100%, we can see a summary of the process, to see if everything has gone smoothly. If there's any problem, we can see it here too.
If you go to another URL or close the browser, the import process still take place in the background thanks to Connectif. Only difference is that you can't access the summary, so you can't see the contact that had an error in the process.
Updating existing contacts
If you ever need to make a change in a field for every contact and do it in an easy and fast way, you can do it via the import tool.
For that, we just have to go to the first import step and select "Override existing".
This option will replace the data from the fields that we are updating via CSV file. The mandatory field is the email one. Also, if we want to update empty fields, we can mark "update only empty fields", too.