You can use the platform’s import functionality to import supporter data along with opt-ins, questions and participations.
1) Prepare the import file
The first step is to prepare the file – see the dedicated article here.
This is an important to get this right – ensure the data is clean and follow the steps carefully.
If you have a large file, you may want to start by importing one or two rows first so you can verify the data and ensure you have the format right .
You can include additional columns to optionally opt a supporter into a question, and/or participate in a campaign, which the article explains in more detail.
Importing supporter data and opt in/ question values will not generate transactions that will subsequently come out of the bulk export API. Importing a campaign participation will create a participation transaction from the relevant page.
An individual import file is limited to 20MB. Please check the size of your file before continuing.
CSV files must be in UTF-8 format
2) Upload the file
Go to Data & Reports > Import and you will see this page:
Click Select File to upload your csv file.
3) Choose how the records should be processed
Once the file has been uploaded you will need to decide how to process the records. You have two options.
When you import data into Engaging Networks, it looks at the email address (as a unique identifier) to match it against any existing records.
- Add new records and update existing supporters. If you choose this default option, it will create new records for any email addresses in your file that do not exist, and update any records where the email address does exist.
- Only create new supporters and ignore updates to existing supporters. If you choose this option, it will only create supporters. For any email addresses that already exist, it will ignore those data rows and not update the records.
Campaign Participation
The “Once imported, tag these supporters as having participated in a page?” checkbox is optional.
If you check the “Yes” box, it will tag the imported supporters as having participated in an advocacy campaign. Once checked, you can then select the campaign you wish to assign participation to from the dropdown menu.
Only ‘Live’ pages are listed as pages you can tag against.
Imported data does not get included in ‘Participations’ statistics in the page’s Quick Report.
Instead of this method, you can also add a column in your import file to participate the supporter in the page. See the preparation article for more information
Using Saved Import Formats
To optionally import the records using a saved import format, tick the “Yes” checkbox against the “Do you want to use a previously saved input format?” question. Once ticked, you can then select the saved import format from the dropdown menu.
Click on the settings icon 
to see a list of available import formats which you can also preview.
If you use a saved format, the data file must match the format exactly
4) Map the columns to data fields
After your import options are set, click on the “Map Data” button to map your header rows to the corresponding fields in your Account Data Structure.
Engaging Networks will automatically try to map your header fields to those in the Account Data Structure if the names match. Otherwise, you will need to manually select the fields you would like to map them to.
Be sure to look over the mappings carefully. If you have similarly named questions and fields, you may accidentally update the wrong one.
Please use the HPC Value and HPC Currency fields to import a supporter’s Highest Previous Contributions, and/or the MRC Value and MRC Currency to import a supporter’s Most Recent Contributions.
If you wish to leave out a column, just leave the “Map To” without a field mapping and it will be skipped during the import.
5) Import the data
Once you have the fields mapped correctly click “Import” to being your import.
It is EXTREMELY IMPORTANT that you ensure your mapping is correct, otherwise data will be stored in the wrong columns. Please double-check everything before you start your import. YOU CANNOT UNDO AN IMPORT.
Depending on your import process settings you will see one of two confirmation dialogs.
Once confirmed, a job number will be displayed corresponding to that import.
Saving Import Formats
To save an import format for future use, check the “Yes” checkbox next to the “Save this format for future use” question and name it before clicking “import” from the data-mapping screen.
Saving the format will allow you to skip the manual mapping process next time you import a file in this format. This saved format can be used for future dashboard imports and imports done using the import API.
6) Check the import status
Go to the Jobs monitor and you will see a list of all the current jobs in your account.
When your job has completed, you will see a cloud download icon appear in the “Results” column. If you click on this link a file will download and you’ll be able to see if any records failed to be imported. If this happens it’s generally because the email address was in an invalid format. The file will give you the email address to fix, so you can go back to your spreadsheet, tidy up the records in question, and re-upload them.
If your import was 100% successful, the file you download from the ‘Jobs monitor’ will be blank or just contain a heading “FAILED RECORDS”. If there is nothing underneath this heading, then there were no failed records and the import was successful.
If you go to Account settings > Account emails, you can enter an email address to receive notifications when a job completes (look for the ‘Notification email alert’ section), or you can just go to the ‘Jobs monitor’ at any time to check on the status
Please allow one hour for imported data to be available in the UI for querying.
Import History
Click on the “Import History” tab to view a list of files that have been imported. File name, imported record count, rejected record count, and import date are available from this tab.
You can also check the Job monitor’s history tab to see a log showing how many records were successfully imported.
Troubleshooting
If your import is rejected when uploading
- Check that the name of the file does not contain characters such as brackets.
- Check that you include an Email Address in the file
- Check that it is a CSV file in the UTF-8 format. In Excel, this is an option in the “Save as type” drop down, listed as “CSV UTF-8 (Comma delimited)”
- Check that the file is not over 20MB. If so, split into smaller files
- Check the file for any | characters or double quotes ” in the cells. These can cause the upload to fail. Search for and remove:
| “ ” “ - If you still have trouble, we recommend trying a single row of data first to test to eliminate issues such as file formats. If that works, you know there is a data issue somewhere in your file
If not all data was imported
- The Job Monitor’s downloaded report will tell you of any rejections. Common issues are spaces at the end of email addresses which might not be easily visible
- Other issues are email addresses not formatted correctly. We can only import valid addresses or [AUTO] if there is no known email address. For example, supporter@hotmail would be rejected – it should probably be [email protected]
If the data is not showing up in Lookup Supporters or the Query Builder
- You may need to wait up to one hour after a successful import before the data is available
- If you had duplicate email addresses in your import file, the latest row of data would be the one that the record ends up being updated to