Availability
Overview
It is possible to import a list of customers from a CSV (comma separated values) file. The CSV file have to be properly formatted with a character, such as a comma, used to separate the data. The import wizard provides sample CSV files that can be downloaded and used as a guide. It is a good idea to have a test run with a limited number of rows in the file before moving to massive import. 🎬 See where import fits into customer setup.
In this article
Requirements
The minimum requirement for importing customers from CSV is the "Manage customers" permission enabled in your global access level.
Important
It is not possible to update existing customers during the import process, e.g. by matching IDs or names in the CSV file; all imported customers are added as new ones. For all imported customers unique IDs are generated during import.
Import wizard
You can get customers stored as a CSV file imported to Birdview using a wizard.
To be imported to Birdview, a customer data containing CSV file should have values in their respective places and separated by a list separator (default is a comma). An example of CSV file fields:
- Company Name
- Is Enabled
- Address
- Hourly Rate
A portion of a source CSV file might look like this:
Company name,Is Enabled,Address,Hourly rate,Description, Email
Enigma Inc.,yes,"1000 Some Street, City, Country",50,,enigma@sample.com
Phantom Inc.,no,,70,Marketing Agency,phantom@phantomfict.com
As you can see, the first line contains the names of fields the values correspond to. Whilst it is useful for some purposes, it may wreak havoc during import. For this reason, you will have the option to skip the first line while importing data from a CSV file.
Importing a list of customers
To import a list of customers, follow these steps:
- Go to Activity Center | More actions (
) | Import from CSV.
- Select Customers from the 'Import list of' drop-down list.
- Once in the Import customers screen, click Choose file, and find the source CSV file.
- Select a list separator.
- Select the Skip first line of the file checkbox (refer to the second note above) if required.
- Click Next.
- Perform field mapping, i.e. link fields of the customers being imported with BV ones. Use Add fields to get new fields to map.
- Click Import.
You will get a message ‘Import completed. X records were imported successfully.’ if import has been successful.
Note
If you are planning to import a large set of data, it's always best to do a test import, with just a few lines of data and if it looks ok then do the rest. To do things this way, you will want to split your CSV into two files, 1st with just a few records and 2nd file with the rest. Do the test on the 1st file and then do the full import on the 2nd file.