What you’ll cover in this article

Introduction

• You can create new contacts on Makerble by importing a CSV spreadsheets containing their details.

• When you create a contact, you populate the red section of their Contact Profile page. (You can populate the purple section - their Timeline - by importing attendance, notes and survey results using Import Stories about tagged contacts)

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• Makerble guides you through the steps to match the columns in your spreadsheet to the fields in your Contact Forms.

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How it works

• Set up your Fields so that you have a field for each column in your spreadsheet

• Choose whether you want the contacts from the spreadsheet to be added to a particular project from the start or whether you want them to only exist at the organisation-level

• Map the columns in the spreadsheet to your fields and that’s it

Considerations:

Fields on Makerble

• You do not need to create fields for

  • Name

  • Date of Birth

  • Address

• This is because Makerble already adds those fields to your account.

  • You still need to add those fields to individual Contact Forms, but this is done by adding them from your library rather than by creating them as new fields.

Spreadsheet format

• Each spreadsheet must be in the CSV file format

• Each spreadsheet must contain less than 800 rows.

  • Follow this guidance to prepare your spreadsheets: Prepare csv import files that will create new Contact Profiles

• Each spreadsheet must contain a header row that contains the names of the columns. Where possible, these should match the names of your fields on Makerble.

• You can import contacts into a specific project or you can import them at an organisation-level. If you plan to import contacts directly into a particular project, you need to do a separate import (using a separate csv file) for each project.

Preliminary steps to complete before you begin the import process

• Every contact that is imported will be recorded as being created by a particular user. The default will be that you will be set as the creator of each contact. However if you would like contacts to be shown as being created by other users, you should do these two steps before importing:

  • 1. Add those users to your Organisation on Makerble

  • 2. Add a column called “Created by” to your CSV spreadsheet and include the email addresses of those users. (Note that the email address used for the users must match the email address that those users use to login to their Makerble Account)

• Ensure that any Fields that are being imported have been created on Makerble.

  • Edit a Classic Contact Form

Watch the walkthrough

https://www.loom.com/share/819be6f9e6334863975b35c720650e05

Step-by-step instructions

1. Select Create in the top menu

2. A dropdown menu appears

3. Select Import

4. In the Choose the type of record you are importing field: select Import Contacts

5. There are six tabs

   1. TAB 1: UPLOAD SPREADSHEET:

      1. Give your import a Name - consider naming it after the file you are importing

      2. For the destination: you can choose whether to import the contacts to a

         1. single project (this will create the contacts and add them to that project within the organisation; they will also be visible at the organisation level because the organisation owns the project)

         2. organisation (this will create the contacts and only add them to the organisation)

      3. Attach the file - it must be a CSV file

      4. Press Next

   2. TAB 2: PREVIEW AND EDIT:

      1. This simply shows you the contents of your CSV file. You can edit it directly here if you want to, but you shouldn’t need to.

      2. If there are any fields that are not being matched, make sure you select Skip This Field. Otherwise you won’t be able to proceed.

      3. Press NEXT

   3. TAB 3: MATCH COLUMNS TO FIELDS

      1. Here you can match the columns in your spreadsheet to the fields

      2. Press NEXT

   4. TAB 4: SET RULES FOR MATCHING

      1. This displays each list field

      2. This relates mostly to the list type fields. It allows you to match the different Answer Choices in the column of the spreadsheet and match them to the Answer Choices available in that list field on Makerble

      3. If there are any Answer Choices that are not being matched, make sure you select Skip Column. Otherwise you won’t be able to proceed.

      4. Once you’ve matched these up you can press Next

      5. If you don’t have any list fields being matched, you can simply press Next

   5. TAB 5: SET RULES FOR MERGING

      1. Merging is disabled. Please press Next.

   6. TAB 6: CONFIRM IMPORT

      1. This is a preview of what will be imported

      2. Simply scroll to the bottom and press Next (alternatively displayed as Start Import or Finish)

   7. A popup appears to let you know that the import has begun

6. You arrive on the Manage Imports page - https://www.makerble.com/record_importer/ - and the import process happens in the background

Troubleshooting

Related articles

• Import survey responses, attendance records, case notes and stories with tagged contacts using a CSV file