How To Bulk Import Contact Details
When first setting up your ImpactAware account you don’t want to spend a lot of your time carrying out data entry. This guide takes you through the steps to import Contact details from Outlook into your account. As you will see this process can be used for importing data from a wide variety of data sources and not just Outlook.
We know that you want to get as much out of ImpactAware and its Business Continuity features as quickly as possible. This is why we provide additional tools to reduce the time it takes to get you up and running. This guide introduces you to our ImpactAware Contact Import tool and walks you through the following process.
- Exporting your data from Microsoft Outlook
- Preparing your data for Import
- Launching the ImpactAware Contact Import tool
- Importing your Contact Data into your account
Exporting your data from Microsoft Outlook
To export your contacts from Microsoft Outlook goto the File Menu and select the Import & Export …menu item. This will open up the Import & Export Wizard. Select Export to a file and hit the next button. In the filetype dialog select Comma Separated Values (Windows) and hit next. Select the contacts folder you want to export and hit next. Finally, select the file you want to save your contacts to and hit the Finish button.
This will generate a CSV file containing the contacts from the Contacts folder you selected.
Preparing your data for Import
Before you can import your contacts into ImpactAware you need to prepare the file to make sure it conforms to what ImpactAware expects. This is because you may have created new fields or modified existing fields within Microsoft Outlook. This also means that you can import Contact details from a wide variety of data sources not just Outlook. You simply need to make sure that the import file is in Comma Separated Value (CSV) format and the field names match what we expect. This process should only take 5 minutes no matter how many records you want to import.
First open up the file you exported from Outlook within Microsoft Excel. You will see a spreadsheet that has the following format:
You will see that each row corresponds to a particular contact record and the title of each field can be identified on the first row. As you can see from the example above, the first column contains the First Name of the contact, the second column contains the Last Name of the contact and so on.
When the ImpactAware Contact Import tool reads this file it looks for column headings it understands and ignores all others. You now need to make sure that the column names in row 1 correspond to column names that our import tool understands.
Read each column name and if you want to import the data rename the column to one of the following field names that ImpactAware understands.
- Title
- First Name
- Middle Name
- Last Name
- Suffix
- Business Street 1
- Business Street 2
- Business Street 3
- Business City
- Business County
- Business Postcode
- Business Country
- Home Street 1
- Home Street 2
- Home Street 3
- Home City
- Home County
- Home Postcode
- Home Country
- Company
- Business Phone
- Home Phone
- Mobile Phone
Once your happy that the column names match the appropriate field names then save the excel file. Make sure you save in Comma Separated Value (CSV) format.
Launching the ImpactAware Contact Import tool
To launch the ImpactAware Contact Import tool visit the web install address you were provided when your account was first setup. Click the install link for the Import tool, and just like ImpactAware the tool will be installed and running in less than 60 seconds.
You will be required to enter your account name and password before using the tool. Please note that only users with User Admin rights can use the Import tool.
Importing your Contact Data into your account
To import the contacts you have prepared simply hit the Browse button and select the CSV file. Then hit the Import button to begin the import process. As the tool imports the contacts it will provide you with feedback on its progress. If any of your contacts are invalid they will be ignored and if the tool identifies any contacts that already exist within your ImpactAware account, these will not be imported. An update of how many contacts have been imported or ignored can be seen on the front panel of the tool.
Once the tool has completed the import you can close it down and launch ImpactAware to see a full list of the contacts you have just imported.
