Import Businesses
Document Actions
Introduction
Executing the import process
Default fields description
Importing additional (custom) fields
General rules for formatting csv files
Introduction:
The import businesses functionality offers the possibility to mass creation of businesses.
Note: now the import businesses functionality also permits to use MSExcel xml files. To do so, if you are using the MSExcel spreadsheet, save your files in xml format, and select the xml format in the import form.
In the personal bar, click directory setup, later on this page click
on Import Businesses (in Maintain Businesss Records box), and this would lead you to the importForm page (which can only be used and accessed by admin users). At the bottom there is a link download csv template that will download a file containing a line that must always be the header of the file to
import. The fields to import are those in that file.
Executing the import process:
After you filled the file to import, put the file's path in the input text box, or click browse and select the file. Before proceeding consider the following options:
- file format: csv or xml files
- allow updates. to decide whether to allow updates to existing records or only allow creation of new ones.
- dry run mode: to test the import before committing to running it. More details here
And then click on go button.
The application will display a result page showing the amount of successful records imported, the amount of successful records updated, maybe a list of imported records with some warning messages, and a list of not imported records and the reasons why those were not imported. Some of the reasons for a record to not being imported may be if some of the required fields are not filled (required fields are businessId and businessName, see field descriptions below), or if the id was already taken (unless updating is allowed, in which case the existing record will be updated), or if illegal characters have been used.
The imported businesses are approved at creation time, so is not necessary to go to pendingList and approve each one.
All the imported users have for default password the string changeme. Each company imported should log in with his "businessId" and changeme as password. After that, on the personal bar, they can click on my preferences to change their password.
Hint: a user can find out their businessId, by simply viewing their detailed business listing and looking at the URL. Their businessId will be at the end of the URL.
The result page will warn you about the business created without contact
information. A business will have contact information if first, middle,
or last name are given.
Description of the default fields that can be imported:
Important Note: @page { size: 8.5in 11in; margin: 0.79in } P { margin-bottom: 0.08in } -->Although some administrator could had customized some business fields, original field names will be used for this functionality.
businessId: a string of text for business id, and as this is going to be used for the business url, must be valid URL characters, i.e. ASCII letters or digits, _, ~, ,, . or space. Moreover, they must not begin with _ . Must be unique, and is a required field. This field is going to be used for the site user associated with the business too.
businessName: Company's name. Required field.
businessAddress1: business address.
businessAddress2: second business address.
businessZipCode: business zip code. For Canadian codes the characters must be arranged in the form "ANA NAN", where "A" represents an alphabetic character, and "N" represents a numeric character (e.g. K1A 0T6). US codes must be any string containing five digits and these digits will be the zipCode attribute content (i.e. all non digit characters will be stripped out). In both cases, if the code not match the format, the zipcode attribute will be left empty. On world wide directories, any text string will be accepted.
businessCity: business city.
businessPhone: business phone number. Any string containing seven to ten digits will be accepted, and these digits will be the phone attribute content (i.e. all non digit characters will be stripped out). If the given string does not contain seven to ten digits, the phone attribute will be left empty. On world wide directories, any text string will be accepted.
businessFax: business fax number. The same rules than for businessPhone.
businessEmail: business mail address.
businessWebsite: business website address. Remember not to put the protocol prefix (http, https).
productServiceDescription: piece of text describing the products/services provided.
businessDescription: piece of text describing the business' activities, which will be used in searchs.
locallyOwned: if the company to import is locally owned must be "1" or "true". Any other value (including empty) will be treated as "false".
contactFirstName: business contact first name.
contactMiddleName: business contact middle name.
contactLastName: business contact last name.
contactTitle: business contact position in the company.
membershipTypeId: the membership type id to bind with
the business.
In order to fill the membership type id field, the id can be found for each membership type in the membership's edition page: from directory setup, click on manage memberships and later in the edit link of the desired membership.
Note: The "Industry", "State" and "Product/Services" (and "Country" for world wide directories) fields cannot be set via the import function.
Importing additional (custom) fields
You may also want to import the data from custom fields that are particular to your directory database. After you create those custom fields (from directory setup area), you will be able to import information into the online directory just as with the above fields
In the spreadsheet you have of information, add a column for each custom field you want to import (it is not necessary to add fields to the spreadsheet if you do not want to import that information; also, the order of the fields in the spreadsheet does not matter). For each custom field defined, add the name of the custom field preceded by the Custom word for each column. For example, if there is a custom field named Something the column will be named CustomSomething. If there is a custom field named called Something Else, the title of the column would be CustomSomething Else. The value for those fields could be any string. If the custom field is searchable (ie a checkbox), you must fill the field in the spreadsheet with either "1" or "true" to set it as marked, and any other value (including empty) will be treated as "false".
If the .csv file contains columns with headings for custom fields that have not been defined in the directory, the values in those columns will not be imported.
General Formatting Rules for csv Files:
Important Note: for csv files, the file to import must use the character code Unicode (UTF-8)
There are no restrictions on the length of text fields.
Each business to import should be in a line containing the value for each field.
Each field must be a string text, and fields must be coma separated. If you want to omit some field, you have to put the correspondent commas. For example, if you don't want to fill businessAddress2, you should write something like this:
"myNewBusId","myNewBusName","2 Main Street",,"14301", ....
You can enclose each value with quotes as above, or not:
myNewBusId,myNewBusName,2 Main Street,,14301, ....
But if you want to include a comma character somewhere as part of some field content, that content must be quoted:
myNewBusId,"myNewBusName, wich include comma character",,2 Main Street,14301, ....
