Is Importing as Hard as it Seems?

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Jackie Cistaro
Jackie Cistaro ✭
Ancient Membership Facilitator 1 Photogenic
in Blackbaud Raiser's Edge NXT®: General Discussion
Hi, although I've been working with Raiser's Edge for quite some time, I'd never done an import before, but it's getting to the point where it might be a good idea.  We want to add a lot of new people to our database and I'm thinking I'd like to try importing, but it just seems so complicated.  With all the set-up that apparently needs to be done, would it just be faster for me to just do new constituent batches?



Thanks for any advice and/or help!



--Jackie Cistaro

Golda Och Academy
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  • Jody Johnson
    Jody Johnson ✭
    Ancient Membership Facilitator 1 Photogenic
    Are you just importing names and addresses, or is there additional information that you are posting?

     
  • Matt Page
    Matt Page ✭
    Tenth Anniversary Facilitator 2 Photogenic
    I had no previous experience of importing but started having to use it 6 months ago and have done numerous imports since then. SO on the one hand I still remember how it seems overwhelming/scary/compliated/difficul, but on the other hand I can encourage you that it soon gets a lot easier and is definitely worth going through the process of getting used to doing it. Once you're through that it won't seem as hard as it does now.



    Whether or not it is faster depends on how many you have to do, but if your organisation is planning on growing then it probably will be, and if this information arrives with you already in a spreadsheet / word doc / other database format and you're going to need to add it regularly then all the moreso as you can save the details of the import making it loads quicker in future.



    If you can't go on the course play around with it on the sample database. We actually got our IT guys to rig up a backup copy of our database to a remote server which meant I could practice to my heart's content on that without risk of ruining everything .It's a steepish learning curve, but well worth it and perhaps in a few months you'll be where I am begining to forget how daunting it really once was.



    Matt



     
  • Jackie Cistaro
    Jackie Cistaro ✭
    Ancient Membership Facilitator 1 Photogenic
    Thank you for the responses!  Jody, I would only be added in constituent names and addresses and spouse (if it lets you do that)...no gifts or anything like that.  Matthew, did you just use the import guide to help you get through it, or did anyone from Blackbaud give you assistance?  Was there anything in particular that really helped you out with it? 



    --Jackie Cistaro
  • Karen Stuhlfeier
    Karen Stuhlfeier ✭
    Tenth Anniversary Facilitator 3 Name Dropper Photogenic
    I import in a lot of things including prospect ratings and solicitor and proposal information. It does get much easier once you've done it a few times. Remember to validate your import before actually importing the records so you can make sure that it's doing what you want it to do.  



    I did take the online importing class and if you're able to it's very helpful to be able to walk through the process in a class. 
  • Gina Gerhard
    Gina Gerhard ✭
    Ancient Membership Facilitator 3 Photogenic
    Jackie - I agree with your comments about importing and offer up some comments:
    • We used to opt for manually entering vs. importing new records due to the 'clunkiness' of the process and also because RE's duplicate checking functionality wasn't all that great.
      • Now that the duplicate functionality has been improved, I'm using imports more now.
    • I first spent several hours looking at Blackbaud's documentation and figuring out how to correctly structure the import file.  
      • Blackbaud has good documentation and videos, but I still find it a bit confusing to make sense of it all.
      • I then wrote up my own instructions in order to make it more understandable and include some things specific to what we wanted to pull into our imports.
    • It's definitely easier to do if you do it often.
      • Each time I do it is easier and quicker since I'm now more familiar and adept with the process.  
      • It's not so easy to hand this task off to someone else to do, and it must be done totally correctly for data to come in without errors.
      • Who ever realized you needed so many underlying 'system fields' but that's what takes the most time, creating columns and creating import IDs for much of the new data coming in.  
      • You also need to understand your addressee/salutation codes so you can import using the numeric value that corresponds to the format you want. Bringing phones/emails in require 4 columns for each set, so that's a bit of work. And you need to understand the 00,01,02.. indexes you need to use to group corresponding data together
    • I have a 'threshold' - so if it's over 100 records we will use import but under 100 we'll enter manually (either using constituent batch or default sets to make data entry a bit easier).
    • I recently did an import of around 200 records and received a big thankyou from the person who normally would have had to enter them. It's a welcome relief to tedious data entry, but like anything else you need to weigh how much time it takes to do it manually vs. creating/performing the import. And there's a shift in who is performing the work.
    • If your import needs warrant using a third-party product like ImportoMatic, that can really streamline the process but there is a cost for the product.
  • Matt Page
    Matt Page ✭
    Tenth Anniversary Facilitator 2 Photogenic

    Jackie Cistaro:

    ...Matthew, did you just use the import guide to help you get through it, or did anyone from Blackbaud give you assistance?  Was there anything in particular that really helped you out with it? 

    Hi Jackie,

    There were a number of different things I worked together. Perhaps the most useful thing was the eLearning Library module you can access here for free:

    eLearning Library

    Click on "Administration and Plug-ins".



    I also had the benefit of having imports set up and saved by my predecessors and, as I said trial and error to get it right.



    And then of course the Import guide PDF is (occasionally) helpful, plus this forum, chat support and phone support etc. Short term it may seem like hassle but longer term if your org wants to grow and you want to up your professional development I think it's a worthwhile investment.



    Matt
  • Nicole S
    Nicole S ✭
    Ancient Membership Facilitator 3 Name Dropper Photogenic
    Importing can seem daunting at first and if you don't do it properly you can end up making a bigger mess and spending more time cleaning it up than if you had entered it manually cheeky But that's no reason not to try.



    2 suggestions --



    First, start with importing a single record to test everything out.  That way if something isn't linked properly it's just one record, no sweat. 



    Second, as a general rule, if my source file needs to be re-typed or massive cleanup or isn't even in CSV to begin with, I would probably do a constituent batch.  If it's a fairly good file, I go with a little clean up and then import.
  • Leslie Parker
    Leslie Parker ✭
    Tenth Anniversary Facilitator 1 Photogenic
    Actually, once you get past the first couple of times, it really is pretty easy to import, much easier than it used to be. I use it all the time. My rule of thumb is if it already exists on a spreadsheet and is greater than 20 or so records I do an import. If it has to be typed into something anyway I use batch.
  • Jackie Cistaro
    Jackie Cistaro ✭
    Ancient Membership Facilitator 1 Photogenic
    Thank you everyone for your responses and advice!  I've decided to go ahead and do the Import I online training...after reading your posts and taking a look at some of the written info Blackbaud provides on importing, I realized that the best thing for me to do is to see how this is done.  I'm hoping to eventually get the hang of it...and I love the idea of importing just one new record...nothing much to worry about if I mess up!



    --Jackie
  • JoAnn Strommen
    JoAnn Strommen ✭✭✭✭✭
    Ancient Membership Facilitator 4 Name Dropper Photogenic
    Jackie,

    You've gotten lots of great help.  I second the suggestion of doing one or two records first.  I was very hesitant to do my first import also.  I did the online training and actually printed out the import user guide - it's the only one I've printed but it's been a good reference. Even when do imports now I take the first record or two and save it into a separate file and import them as a test before doing the whole file.  



    Another suggestion I got somewhere along the way was to create an export file of one record with all the fields I wanted to import. That excel export then gave me the headings/fields I woud need for my import.  Think training gave the best pattern/system to use for creating import ID's that you need.



    I've done more exports and do use them when there's any large quantity of records to import. It can be intimidating but it gets easier.  As Gina pointed out the extensions (01, 02 etc) will mess up your data when you import if you don't have the same extension for all fields related to that data (ex: address, city, state, zip if you have two addresses or phone type & phone #).  I did miss that one time but always double check it now.



    I skimmed the responses and don't recall seeing it - be sure your database is backed up before you do it.  If you have the worst case scenario you can revert to your backup and try again.



    The other thing that is nice is that you can save your import and use the format again when you need to import again.

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