Pros/Cons of Importomatic

Agata Ketterick 3

I'm looking into importomatic, but would like to hear from actual users. I work in higher ed and right now we import alumni and parent information using import in RE. What are the benefits of importomatic? All I get from their website is that importomatic makes imports easier but it's unclear specifically how it's easier.


Thanks!

Karen Knisely

Dear Agata – I have been using Importomatic
intensely now for three years at a small public radio
station.  It has helped me immensely with our pledge drives
and sustainers.  If would send me your contact information, I
am glad to chat about it in more depth.

 

Good luck!  karen

 

____________________________

Karen Knisely

Development Services Coordinator

Rhode Island Public Radio

kknisely@ripr.org

(401) 519-0241

1 Union Station

Providence, RI 02903

 

Providence Metro: 88.1 FM

South County: 102.7 FM

Central RI: 91.5 FM

Online: http://ripr.org/

 

Subscribe to our free, daily email news
digest: The Daily Catchhttp://ripr.org/dailycatch

 

Melissa S Graves

Oh gosh, where to begin...

• If a parent is also an alum (or previous parent, donor, etc.) - the system can stop the import and ask you if you want to create a new record or update their existing record. It won't be kicked out for you to figure out what to do in a second import (unless you want it to do that - it can do that too).
• Any extra data you want to add you do not need to add columns to your import file. The IOM profile you create can be set up to know to add X constituent code, X attribute, X educational information, etc. without any data manipulation in your excel file. Setup the first time can take a while but once done it is literally pushbutton from your original file. You may not get the benefit to this but it is HUGE for me. You can get the file and within 2 minutes be importing it without touching it.
• Support is incredible. Always helpful and awesome listeners.

Agata Ketterick 3

Are you saying that once I setup an alumni
import, I won’t have to manipulate the original excel spreadsheet I
get, I’ll just be able to import with the click of a button?

 

 

Agata
Ketterick

Database and
Reporting Manager

716 Stevens Avenue

Portland, ME 04103

Direct Line:
207-221-4388

Fax: 207-221-4950

Email: aketterick@une.edu

 

 

Every student,
every day, every opportunity | www.une.edu/giving

 

Melissa S Graves

Agata Ketterick:

Are you saying that once I setup an alumni import, I won’t have to manipulate the original excel spreadsheet I get, I’ll just be able to import with the click of a button?

 

 

Agata Ketterick

Database and Reporting Manager

716 Stevens Avenue

Portland, ME 04103

Direct Line: 207-221-4388

Fax: 207-221-4950

Email: aketterick@une.edu

 

 

 

Every student, every day, every opportunity | www.une.edu/giving

 

 

YES!!!!

Anne Herbert

I work in higher ed and for our data we do
have to format information in the excel file prior to uploading, so
it really depends on what you are doing.  I also do several
imports for each grad load and still do RE imports.  You
cannot load 2 addresses in one import and for our foreign students
they have both a local and an international address, so that goes
through a second import pass in IOM. 

 

Not all fields are available in IOM.  We
load the comment field for all our education records and this
cannot be imported via IOM, so I use RE for it.

 

If you have existing alumni who are getting an
additional degree we have found that the address/phone information
out of our student system may not be as up-to-date as RE.  IOM
lets you compare the address as you go with the import and select
what you want to do, which is great.  Not so great is how
phones/emails are handled.  What we’ve opted to do is load the
phone as an attribute if it duplicates an existing phone type (IOM
doesn’t compare the actual number yet).  Then I export those
and do a comparison to determine what to do and re-import what is
new/not duplicated.

 

Even with these issues I strongly recommend
it, since it handles many extra steps for you.  For example,
we may have students already in our database and I have it set to
automatically change their constituent code from Student to Alumni
and to make Alumni the first code on the record.

 

Good luck with your analysis.

Agata Ketterick 3

Anne Herbert:

I work in higher ed and for our data we do have to format information in the excel file prior to uploading, so it really depends on what you are doing.  I also do several imports for each grad load and still do RE imports.  You cannot load 2 addresses in one import and for our foreign students they have both a local and an international address, so that goes through a second import pass in IOM. 

 

Not all fields are available in IOM.  We load the comment field for all our education records and this cannot be imported via IOM, so I use RE for it.

 

If you have existing alumni who are getting an additional degree we have found that the address/phone information out of our student system may not be as up-to-date as RE.  IOM lets you compare the address as you go with the import and select what you want to do, which is great.  Not so great is how phones/emails are handled.  What we’ve opted to do is load the phone as an attribute if it duplicates an existing phone type (IOM doesn’t compare the actual number yet).  Then I export those and do a comparison to determine what to do and re-import what is new/not duplicated.

 

Even with these issues I strongly recommend it, since it handles many extra steps for you.  For example, we may have students already in our database and I have it set to automatically change their constituent code from Student to Alumni and to make Alumni the first code on the record.

 

Good luck with your analysis.

 

A major challenge we have using RE import is updating existing alumns (sounds like IMO would be very helpful with this) and linking alums to existing parent records. Could IMO simplify identifying parent records and linking them to the alum records I'm importing?

Anne Herbert

It is possible to do some relationship
matching for parents, but I do this in an additional load.  It
has to have something in common to match on and some students do
not provide their parent’s home address/landline, so those take a
little more work.

 

I recommend talking with the IOM staff on
ideas of how to handle that.  They have a great support
team.

Becky Griswold 2

Agata Ketterick:

I'm looking into importomatic, but would like to hear from actual users. I work in higher ed and right now we import alumni and parent information using import in RE. What are the benefits of importomatic? All I get from their website is that importomatic makes imports easier but it's unclear specifically how it's easier.


Thanks!

I absolutely LOVE importomatic!!!  I'm in higher ed and do massive imports all the time.  What I like very best is that it isn't a blind import, the user has the opportunity to interact with the data as much or as little as wanted.  It is possible to actually go into the constituent record and make changes manually during the import process.  Dictionaries can be set up to translate data, which cuts down on the amount of data mainipulation happening in the spreadsheet prior to import and helps with consistency.  Additionally, columns don't have to be added to the spreadsheet but instead can be added as virtual fields.  I use IOM just about every day and can't say enough good about it.  It does have quirks but it's heads and shoulders above using the RE import function, at least for what I'm doing.

Tom Klimchak

Yep, another higher education client here, and, yep, ImportOMatic is totally worth it for the various alumni, student and parent import processes we run throughout the year.  


I won't go so far as to say you will never have to fiddle with Excel spreadsheets, but it definitely takes a lot of the grunt work out of regular imports.  We haven't played with the virtual fields all that much (though from what I can tell they're very powerful), but we do use "Dictionaries" a lot... Here's a quick example:


Our academic system exports out the alumni major field as "BUS ADM" but's ugly.  We want it to say "Business Administration".  Instead of going through an Excel file of 1,400 alumni and doing find and replace (for hundreds of different majors!) we can just built an ImportOMatic dictionary.  Everytime we run the alumni import it automatically replaces BUS ADM with Business Administration.  No more fiddling or fixing before the import.


Our alumni import process used to take 3 days (a lot of that was prepping and re-checking the data fields in Excel)... with ImportOMatic it takes about 3 hours. We still follow up afterwards and just tweak some of the records, but 95% of them are ready to go without any intervention at all.  


As others have said, it takes a little bit of time to understand how it all works, there are a bazillion options and there are a few fields it's still missing ("no major comment field... grrr") but it's well, well, well worth looking into.  Good luck!

Melissa S Graves

The combination of virtual fields and dictionaries is so powerful and lifesaving. I can only recall one instance where I had to manipulate the original spreadsheet and I think it was more of a timing issue (it was faster to do that than sit and figure out how to get IOM to do it for me) LOL. The learning curve can feel enormous. The trainings you get with it sound ridiculously long and tedious but absolutely necessary because there are so many options and you need to understand all of them.


Best of luck getting an implementing IOM

David Ritchie

Agata Ketterick:

I'm looking into importomatic, but would like to hear from actual users. I work in higher ed and right now we import alumni and parent information using import in RE. What are the benefits of importomatic? All I get from their website is that importomatic makes imports easier but it's unclear specifically how it's easier.


Thanks!

Hi Agata,

We have been using importomatic for a few years now, and it does a very nice job.


I would also recommend looking at JMG Solutions as well. We actually use both tools, as JMG has really helped us with our API connections with iDonate and other tools. They also allow you to create profiles that are limited to specific users. So if you want to allow other users to do things such as mass load of Actions, JMG provides allot of capabilities and provides an additional layer of security. 

Cheers,

David

Melissa S Graves

Importacular by Ziedman is another awesome option.