Account Settings - Imports

With Patch Retention you can Import a list of contacts into your account!

Before importing your list of contacts into your database, please consider the following:

• Organize your list / file
  Does your list contain everything you need?
  First name, last name, phone number, SMS Opt-in Status, Email Opt-In Status
  
  
• Clean up your list
  Does your list contain duplicate profiles?
  Do some profiles have emoji's or unnecessary punctuation?
  
  
• File types supported:
  .CSV
  .XLS
  .XLSX 

For organization, we strongly recommend creating a Group before importing your file.

To begin importing your contacts, navigate to Account Settings, and select 'Import'.

Selecting this option will bring up the Main View and list all imports for the account.

This will list the historical activity for ALL imports.
You can sort this view by Date, # of Records, Status, Accepted By (User who imported the file)

To Create a new Import, click on the (+) sign in the lower right.

How to Import a New File

Select the (+) sign to Start a New Import.

Step 1: Configure your import using the ‘Configure Import Settings’

There are 3 questions to continue:
'What would you like to do with the new import values?'
And you can choose between:

• Update Existing Contacts and Create New Contacts (if not found)  RECOMMENDED
• Only Update Existing Contacts (do NOT create any new contacts, even if they are not found)
• Only Create New Contacts (do NOT update existing)

'Which contact field would you like to use as the identifier for updating existing contacts?'
You can choose from any of these fields:

1. • Email
   • Phone Number
   • Patch Contact ID
   • # Checkins
   • # Offers Redeemed
   • Address
   • Address2
   • City
   • Favorite Color
   • First Name
   • Gender
   • Last Name
   • Opt-In Channel
   • State
   • Zip

'How should existing contact fields be updated?'

• Do not replace contact fields where values exist (overwrite existing info)
• Replace contact fields with the imported value (overwrite existing data) if not empty
• Increment loyalty points or punchcard, AND insert values where values are empty (this will not overwrite existing values, except for loyalty and punchcard but those will add to (existing value + import value) and not overwrite)

If you select the option:
‘Only Create New Contacts (do NOT update existing)',  then no other selections are needed

Once the Import settings are configured, select the Continue button in the lower right corner, or the 'arrow icon' in the upper right corner.

Step 2: Upload & Select Fields

Next, you will select and upload your import file.

Supported file types are .csv, .xls, .xlsx

Once your file is uploaded you will Select Import Fields.

If your first line item is a row of headers and NOT an actual contact, select the option ‘First line of file’ Contains headers (ignore line) and it will skip importing the labels.

Now you must match the columns of information from the imported file to the corresponding field in Patch by clicking on the Select a Field Dropdown arrow to scroll and search for the field.

Leave the field blank or unselected to NOT import that column of information.

In other words, if I did NOT want to import a particular column, I would NOT select a field for it.

Only selected fields get imported.

When your fields are set, click on the Arrow in the upper right to continue to the next page. 

Step 3: Finalize Settings & Confirm the import. 

The top section ‘Set Additional Data Fields for ALL Contacts’ has a default tag applied to all Imports that tracks the import event for future use, especially when troubleshooting.

If you want to add any additional field values that will be added to every single contact in this import click the ‘View Default Field Values’ button. From there you can add additional Tags, add to a Group, etc.

This is also where you can add your import file into a 'Group'!
You can use a filter to search for these contacts later!

The second section on this page addresses the Opt-In actions you want to have taken for the Contacts in this Import. The most common step is to ‘Do not send opt-in messages’, however, there are options available for you to send various types of double opt-in messages to these Contacts. Please note, in order to send any type of message you will need to update your SMS Settings within your Account Settings in order for the message to actually be sent.

Regardless of the selection, you must type your initials in order to continue with the Import process. This is for record-keeping and liability reasons.

The last section on this page is a summary of the selections made from all of the steps. Once you are ready you can click ‘Confirm & Start Import’.

If for any reason you need to save and come back later you can do this by clicking the ‘Do Later’ button.

Imports Main View

The Import Main View page has 4 columns of information and 3 of which you can sort by clicking on the title of that column.

• Date - Can sort this info by when an import completed
• # of Records - Can sort this column by total number of contacts imported per each file
• Status - Either Completed or Not Started
• Accepted By - Shows the User ID of the admin that accepted liability for the import
  

Click on the eye icon to view a previous import. If the eye icon is greyed out the import is not eligible for preview. 

If an import was marked as 'Do Later' and is waiting to be completed you can delete it by clicking on the trash can icon in the 'Status' column.

Click on the square person silhouette icon to open the contacts module and view those tagged contacts that were imported on that day.

Account Settings Overview