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Importing Contacts

You can import Contacts from a Comma Separated Value (CSV) file into an Address Book. The import file contains rows of data: each row of data defines a Contact and contains values for their Contact details and Contact extended details.

Before you begin

  • To import Contacts into an Address Book in a Publication, you need Contact Management rights and Write permissions for the destination Address Book.
  • To import Contacts into the (All Contacts) node in System Administration—or any other Address Book in System Administration—you need System Administrator rights.
  • You need to know the formatting used in the CSV import file. For information, see Creating the Contact import file.

About this task

When you import Contacts, you can specify how values are assigned or mapped as follows:

  • if you want to apply the same value to the Contacts Detail field for all imported Contacts, select [set to a fixed value] and enter a value in the Value field
  • if the field contains values you do not want to import, select [skip this field]
  • if the values in the field correspond to those of the Contact Detail, map the import field to an existing Contact Detail

Procedure

  1. Open the Content Manager Explorer.
  2. Do one of the following:
    • Navigate to the Publication > Audience Manager node.
    • In System Administration, navigate to the Audience Management node.
  3. Select an Address Book and do one of the following:
    • Click the Import Contacts icon in the toolbar.
    • Choose Import Contacts from the context menu.
    The Import Contacts screen opens in a new window.
  4. In Step 1. Set import options:
    1. Select Create new Contacts if your import file contains Contacts that do not yet exist in Audience Manager, in which case records in the import file containing existing IDs are ignored.
    2. Select Update existing Contacts if the import file contains Contacts already in Audience Manager, in which case records in the import file containing new IDs are ignored.
    3. Select Update and insert Contacts to create new Contacts and update existing ones (the default).

    CSV is a delimited data format. As data can be formatted in several different ways, you need to specify the formatting used in your source import file:

    1. Field separator—specifies how fields/columns are separated.
    2. String delimiter—specifies how fields that contain commas, double-quotes, or line-breaks are delimited.
    3. Decimal separator—specifies the symbol used to mark the boundary between the integral and the fractional parts of a decimal numeral.
    4. Group separator—specifies the symbol used to ease the reading of large numbers (normally, the thousand separator).
    5. Date format—specifies the date format.
  5. In Step 2. Select a file to import:
    1. Click the Load from disk button.
    2. In the File Upload dialog, navigate to the drive and folder that contains the file you want to import into the Address Book, then select the file and click Open.
    3. Click OK to confirm the selection.
  6. When you change the data formatting options, click the Redo mapping button to reload the file using these options.
  7. In Step 3 Define column mapping, for each Contact Detail, you have the following options in the Mapping field (note that mandatory fields are marked by an asterisk):
    • select a field from the drop-down list to map a column in the import file to a Contact Detail
    • select [set to a fixed value] and enter a value in the Value field to apply this value to the Contacts Detail for all imported Contacts
    • select [skip this field] to not import a field for this Contact Detail
    • fields marked in bold indicate the field, or fields, used to uniquely identify Contacts:
      • If one field is marked in bold, the value assigned in the import file for each Contact must be unique
      • If more than one field is marked as bold, the combined value of the fields must be unique.

        For example, Contacts come with a default set of extended detail fields. The fields IDENTIFICATION_KEY and IMPORT_SOURCE are used to uniquely identify Contacts. In this default situation, you could therefore map the IDENTIFICATION_KEY to a column in the CSV file, and set IMPORT_SOURCE to a fixed value such as SDLWEB to identify where the Contacts come from.

    • For System Administrators only, when you import Contacts into the (All Contacts) Address Book, you need to specify a value for the GROUP_KEYVALUE field in one of the following ways:
      • map the GROUP_KEYVALUE to a column in the import CSV file: the values for each column row must be a Key value of an existing Address Book
      • map the GROUP_KEYVALUE to a [set to a fixed value] map: the Value must be a Key value of an existing Address Book.
  8. Click the Preview button. A preview of the data that will be imported is displayed for the first ten Contacts (existing data is not displayed).
  9. Click the Import button.
  10. When the import is complete, a status message is displayed at the bottom of the Import Contacts screen:
    • Click the log file link to view the import log files.
    • Click Close to exit the import dialog.

Results

Contacts are created and/or updated in the specified Address Books. Each row in the import file is evaluated and resolved individually.
  • If you selected to update existing Contacts:
    • in the (All Contacts) node, the Contacts will be updated if the Address Book specified in the CSV file exists and the specified Contact exists and resides in this Address Book.
    • in a selected Address Book, the Contacts will be updated if they reside in this Address Book.
  • If you selected to create new Contacts:
    • in the (All Contacts) node, the Contacts will be created in the specified Address Book.
    • in a selected Address Book, Contacts will be created in this Address Book.
    • the Contact is not created if the Contact identification is not unique