Importing people into EME is done by using a CSV file. The csv delimiter and enclosure can be specified during import. If the delimeter value is empty, then “,” (comma) is taken as value. If the enclosure value is empty, then ‘”‘ (double quotes) is taken as value.
The first line should indicate the names of the columns being imported. Currently these names are recognized (unknown columns will be ignored):
“lastname”,”firstname”,”email”,”phone”,”address1″,”address2″,”city”,”zip”,”state_code”,”country_code”,”massmail”
There is only 1 column required: “email”. If present, the column “massmail” should be 0 or 1 (indicating whether or not that person wants newsletter and generic mails).
In the past, there were also columns “state” and “country”, but using the new feature for state and country for people, the references to those should be used. The state_code should be like the one when creating a state (e.g. “WAS” for Washington), while the country_code should be the 2-letter representation of the country (e.g. “US”, also specified when creating a country).
If the combination of “lastname”,”firstname” and “email” already exists in the database, it will be updated and not added.
A simple example of a CSV file:
"lastname","firstname","email","zip" "Van Liedekerke","Franky","liedekef@telenet.be","2820" "Van Liedekerke2","Franky","liedekef@telenet.be","2820"
If you want, you can also import answers for people based on the group they’re in (remember: you can define a form field to be a “people field” and then decide to show that field for either everybody or specific groups). If you want to import answers for these fields, just add columns to your CSV with titles like “answer_XX” (XX being either the ID of the custom form field or the name). An example line (based on a field called “instructionlevel”):
"lastname","firstname","email","zip","answer_instructionlevel" "Van Liedekerke","Franky","liedekef@telenet.be","2820","master" "Van Liedekerke2","Franky","liedekef@telenet.be","2820","novice"
Importing values for multiselect fields is as simple as concatenating the answers with “||”:
"lastname","firstname","email","zip","answer_instructionlevel","answer_classes" "Van Liedekerke","Franky","liedekef@telenet.be","2820","master","class A||class B" "Van Liedekerke2","Franky","liedekef@telenet.be","2820","novice","class C||class D"
(make sure your multiselect answers correspond with the definition given in the custom field of course).
Adding imported people to existing groups can be done by an extra column “groups”, where you mention the group ids or names the person should be added to (multiple group ids or names need to be separated by “||”).