Contact Import

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What are Imports?

The Import feature is an easy way to create or update many contacts at one time in your Voxie team.

  • Important Note: Voxie uses a contact’s phone number as the unique identifier for that contact, so phone number should be included in all imports. Uploading a file with all phone numbers that already match contacts in your Voxie team will edit those contacts with the information you are uploading, while uploading a file with new phone numbers not already associated with contacts in your Voxie team will create those contacts anew.

Adding New Contacts

Importing new contacts into your team requires a properly formatted .csv file and your customers’ phone numbers. Required formatting of your file later is described below in this article. The only piece of information that is necessary for an initial import of a contact is a phone number; other information that can be useful to store on any contact includes their first name, last name, email, etc.


Updating Existing Contacts

When you re-import a contact that already exists, the import will add or update information to an existing contact.

  • For example, if a contact’s first name is stored in Voxie with one value, and you import that phone number with a new value for their first name, their name will immediately be updated. If you import a new piece of information for an existing contact, it will be added to the matching contact.

Preparing an Import

It is important that you follow the format guide below when importing your file into Voxie. The minimum requirements for a successful import are a “phone” column header with phone numbers.

  • Voxie imports does not accept .xls, .xlsx, or .pdf files.

Basic Formatting Requirements

There are native fields that Voxie recognizes on every contact, which have a required syntax to populate. The minimum requirement is that every row in an uploaded file includes the "phone" column to create or match a contact. Below are the native fields and how they should be written in your file if you are using them.

  • phone **required**
  • first_name
  • last_name
  • email
  • time_zone
  • marketing
    • Simply put if you have permission to text marketing messages to this contact. "opt_in" or "opt_out" are the appropriate input values
  • transactional
    • Simply put if you have permission to text transactional messages to this contact. "opt_in" or "opt_out" are the appropriate input values

 

If you do not have a piece of information for every contact, leave the column blank for any contacts missing that piece of data. Only add the information where you have it.

 

📌 Voxie Tip: If you are having trouble formatting your CSV file, you can find a downloadable CSV template on the upper right hand side of the screen on the Imports page.

 

Subscription Status set up

This is an optional step in which you can set up the Marketing and Transactional Subscription Status, by selecting in the option in this step

For both cases, Marketing and Transactional, this will happen in case you select the available Options:

 Selection  Result
Do Nothing In this scenario, the import will keep each contact subscription status defined in the file, if they are not defined they will be imported as "No Preference"
Opt-in If the Opt-in is selected, all contacts in the current file will be imported as Opted-In, overwriting whatever stated in the file
Opt-out If the Opt-out is selected, all contacts in the current file will be imported as Opted-Out, overwriting whatever stated in the file

 

📌 Voxie Tip: New contacts will be created. Phone numbers that match an existing contact will be updated with what you upload. Any conflicts with the subscription status or tags set above will be overridden by the CSV values.

 

Importing Tags and Custom Attributes

Importing Tags

To add tags to all contacts being imported from a file, use the optional Tag box, where you will have the option of adding an existing tag or creating a new one. 

 

Note: These steps must be done BEFORE you upload your file on the Import page:

  • Existing Tag: To tag all contacts in an uploaded file with an existing tag, click the drop down under Select Existing Tags and choose the one(s) you want. Make sure to hit Enter to save the tags.

 

To import contacts with tags that apply selectively (i.e., not to all contacts in the file), create a column header of “@@tags@@” in your import file. Note: Microsoft Excel requires an apostrophe (‘) before the @@ characters.

  • Write the tag names comma separated with no space: “tag1,tag2"

Important note: If there are any automations built in your Voxie team that trigger messages or other actions on a tag being added to a contact, these actions will fire immediately upon the list being imported.

 

Importing Custom Attributes

Any additional fields added outside of the native fields or a column of tags will be imported as a custom attribute. The key of the custom attribute will be the column header and the specific contact value will be the value entered in that column for each contact. Custom Attributes are case sensitive. In the example below, “Coffee_Type” is the key while “Espresso” is the value for the contact in row 2.

Column_Headers.png

 

Choosing Between Tags and Custom Attributes

Tags are best used to represent a single piece of information, whereas custom attributes allow you to use key/value pairs.

 

Tags are generally used to identify a contact's status or to trigger an action. Please refer to the Tags article for more information on them. As stated above, you have three options when importing contacts with tags:

  1. Add an existing tag directly on the import page (applies to all contacts in the file)

  2. Create a new tag directly on the import page (applies to all contacts in the file)

  3. Upload multiple tags at once by adding these to your import file (applies to contacts in the rows that have the tags)

 

Contact custom attributes are best for when you want to specify information with a name or label. Unlike tags, contact custom attributes can be used as Message Variables and will allow you to customize a text further. Custom Attributes have a Key and a Value so you can store information with meaning.

Steps to Review Before Uploading your File

  1. Make sure your headers are formatted according to the required syntax for any native fields.
  2. Check your custom attributes; these are case sensitive. If you are importing a custom attribute that is currently included in any text messages that are sent on an ongoing basis, make sure the column header matches the casing of the existing custom attribute.
  3. You can NOT stop an import once you have uploaded it; double check that you have the right file before you import.

Uploading to Voxie

Once you have made sure your file is formatted properly, you can start to import your file into Voxie!

  1. When you are logged into Voxie, click on Contacts on the upper left hand side of the screen.
  2. Select Import. You will be brought to the Import Contacts page where you can upload a file.
  3. Either drag and drop your file to the box labeled "Drop files here to upload" or click on it to select the file from your computer's files.

 

Troubleshooting

 In the scenario the file presents rows with data that is not valid to be imported, an error log will appear with the error details and the ability to download it, you can either correct the rows with the right data, or continue to Import the file anyway, with only the valid rows.

 

📌 Voxie Tip: The Row number doesn't consider the Header as Row 1

 

Results

After adding your file, it will begin loading under the Past Import Tasks header.

Once the import has completed, the status will change to COMPLETED on the left and the row will show the import data: any tags imported, the number of rows, and any errors.