IMPORT Classes Scared Me - Do I Need A Plug-In to Make Importing More Sane?

Maria Petulla:

HI Blackbaud Community--


What do you use for Import? Standard RE, Plug-In? Please let me know.


I'm looking for constructive advice based on the experience below (but please know I also needed to constructively complain!).


I attended 6 hours of IMPORT 1 & 2 from the Learn More Subscription in RE. 


OMG, I was shocked at how backward, archaic, and low-level the IMPORT PROCESS is in RE.

I guess I could recommend to my staff to do it that way but it IS EXTREMELY HORRIBLY TIME CONSUMING.


SHAME on RE for not developing a great Import Process that is easier and less time consuming.


I worked with a non-profit short term that used IMPORT-O-MATIC (I just leraned they cost $14,000 for 3 years (including training)) and the other Non-Profit STILL needed a third (or 4th) party vendor to get the data to upload to RE with Gift Information (Campaign Fund Appeal, Tribute, etc.),


What is your solution? I appreciate all your help!


Thanks,

Maria

 

1. First of all I would suggest ALWAYS exporting the ID with anything you do, not just for imports.  It's always good to have for future reference. And if you need additional information that you didn't export the first time you can use the IDs to create a query and then add the information to the original list easily using either VLOOKUP or INDEX/MATCH.  And if you've got a spreadsheet (or whatever you've exported to) and you decide you don't need the IDs you can easily just delete that column.  Always better to have too much and delete than be missing information and have to go through and add it, even with the help of VLOOKUP and INDEX/MATCH
2. I have the import guide saved so anytime I need to do an import (even if I've done it in the past) I'll pull up the import table I need for what I'm doing to make sure I have all the required fields and any additional fields that I want to import.  It's also easier to then make the header row match the import labels and you don't have to worry about mapping one field to another in the import.
3. I always validate first.  Once again, even if I've done it in the past it's easy to make a mistake or have a piece or information missing or whatever.  That way I can fix it and re-validate instead of having to do another import for the ones that are exceptions.
4. If it's a new import I've never done before, or if I'm importing something that impacts the entire database (or just a large portion of it), I will pull out a couple of rows of data, 5 or so, do a test on those to make sure it's working the way I want it to, and then either do the entire import (minus those rows, you don't want to duplicate) or make the changes I need in the data, remove the incorrect info in those test records, and run the test again to make sure you're corrected what was causing the problem.  Only after I'm comfortable with all of those pieces do I run the full import.

Lauren Coombes:

My issue with Importing is dealing with duplication of things such as addresses, phone numbers and email addresses. Every time i do a graduate import (approximately 4,500 graduates twice a year) there is always a group who already exist on RE if they did a course before and are already an alumni. I then have to manually duplicate check every email/phone number/address on their records against the new one i've been given to ensure i'm not uploading a duplicate and if it does exist on RE already but is no longer marked as their primary, change that around in the import to make it their primary once more (as the graduate data is very fresh so usually the latest snapshot of their communication preferences).


 

Faith Murray:

You shouldn't have to do this.  The import should be catching them as exceptions during the import.  When they come in as students and they already exist as alumni, can you check the student IDs to see if the entries are the same person?  I'm assuming that the registrar already does some of this verification on their end.  U


But duplicates can be a problem if the contact information is different.

 

Pretty sure what Lauren meant was that the emails get duplicated in the record, not that the record itself gets duplicated. For instance, after the import, Tom Jones now has 2 emails tomjones@gmail.com. The only workaround I have found for this, if I suspect it will be a problem, is to export the existing data while creating the import file, change the info en masse in Excel (email1 to email2, then add a new column with new email1 info, then check for duplicate column data), then re-import it all at once. This allows Import to do the manual updating for you, and Excel is much easier to work in bulk.

 

@Claudia Sauers wow thank you so much for this terrific, clean work-around ("one of function"). I'm so relieved!