Starting your Data Import project

The beginning steps of importing data with DMN

Laura Montgomery-Hurrell avatar
Written by Laura Montgomery-Hurrell
Updated over a week ago

IMPORTANT: Please pause all your Workflows in the relevant App before performing the Data Import.

From your dashboard click the Data Manager App icon. If you don't have the icon you may not have access to Data Manager.

Click Data Importer, then click the Plus button, highlighted with the red box in the image below:

1. About

You will need to give your Import:

  • A name, 

  • Description, 

  • Details of where the data came from,

  • The App that you'll be importing the data into. 

Click next when ready to proceed to the next step.

2. Configuration

In this step, you'll need to select the correct occurrence, Event (Mobile Event Capture App Only) and the workflow.

Mobile Events Capture: If the data is being imported into this app, you'll need to create the Events before the data import.

Student Database: If data is being imported to this app, you can only update existing student records, not create new ones. However, you can still add in such things as an MIS Code, a consent or topic.

Selecting Workflow

When selecting the Workflow, you can select an existing workflow or select "Automatically assign".

The "Automatically assign" option will look into the Enquiry Source column that is in your data header file (See step 5 - 6 below). If there is an enquiry source specified, the Importer will then examine the workflows for the "enquiry source =" condition. If there is a matching condition, the data will go onto the workflow that has the same enquiry source as the data. If, however, the condition is not met the data will go onto the catch-all workflow.

If you do not select "Automatically assign", but choose a specific workflow, any conditions will be disregarded and the data will end up on that specific workflow. This is a more direct method.

Consents and Topics

Select which Consent pack you'd like to assign to the students. Mandatory topics will automatically be applied, but optional topics must be selected as required.

There's also the option to only apply the selected consent pack to new students by checking "do not apply consent to existing students". This means that exiting students will retain their current consents and won't be overwritten by your selection.

Click next once all the selections have been made.

3. Data File

This step is where you can download the header file and prepare your data. Click the Download Template button to receive the file. The header file will be different depending on your selection of App in step 1.

The header files can also be downloaded from this article.

Open and examine the columns in the header file. You will need to transfer your data into these columns. 

Please do NOT delete or add any columns as this will cause the import to fail.

To ensure your import is not rejected, please make sure:

  • That there are no empty rows

  • All the required fields are filled out (as noted in the import guides from this article)

Please note: If your data contains any Emoji characters, these will be stripped out of the data on import.

Once you have transferred your data into the header file, you will need to save the file as "CSV (comma delimited)". If, when you upload the file you get the error message of "This file is not UTF-8 encoded", please refer to the following article:
What should I do if I've received a UTF-8 Error?

Once you're happy all your data is fully prepared, move on to step 4, Uploading and Processing the data.

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