How do I import categories from a spreadsheet?
Overview
Categories are how you group your opportunities. If you already know the shape of your programs, the categories importer lets you create all of them from one spreadsheet instead of adding them one at a time, then set the shared settings once for the whole batch.
One row becomes one category. Only the title is required, and you can import up to 500 categories in a single file.
An imported category starts empty. No opportunities are added to it here. Create or import your opportunities afterwards, and put them in these categories then.
1. Where do I find the categories importer?
Go to the Opportunities module, open Categories, then open the Create category button and choose Import categories. Or go straight there: www.vomevolunteer.com/org/import-categories.
The same menu holds Create category, which adds one category and its cover photo.
2. What does my spreadsheet need to look like?
Upload a .xlsx or .csv file. The first row is your column titles, and every row after that is one category.
Only one column is required:
- Title
The rest are optional:
- Description, what the category covers.
- Cover, the name of a cover photo from your theme library.
- Sites, the sites the category is linked to. Separate several with commas in one cell.
On the first step, Upload, there is a Download template button, and it hands you the current template in your own language. Starting from it is the easiest way to get the column titles right, though you do not have to: your own Excel or CSV file works just as well, because column titles are matched loosely, so "Category name", "Name" or "Program" all resolve to Title, and French headings work too.
3. What happens to a row that cannot be created?
It is skipped, and the rest of your file still imports.
A row is skipped for one of two reasons: it has no title, or its title already appears earlier in the same file. That second check exists because a spreadsheet listing the same category twice would otherwise create it twice, which is never what anyone means. Every skipped row is listed with its row number.
4. How do cover photos work?
Cover photos come from your theme library, so they are matched by name rather than created. A Cover column is only useful if your themes have names you recognise.
Because a category always needs a cover, you also pick a default cover photo, used for every category that has none of its own. If any of your rows would end up with no cover at all, Vome asks you to choose that default before you can continue. You can change the cover per category afterwards.
5. How does the "Match your file" step work?
Vome collects every distinct value in your Cover and Sites columns, matches what it can, and asks you about the rest. For each value you either match it to something that exists, create it, or skip it, and where a value is close to an existing record you get a suggestion you can accept in one click.
Covers can only be matched or left on the default. Sites can be matched or created: creating one opens the full site setup so you can name it properly, and you can add its branding and settings afterwards. One Access for linked sites choice, View only or Can edit, is applied to every site link this import creates.
Nothing is created until you press Import on the review step, so you can work through the matching and still walk away.
Sites need the Enterprise or Ultimate plan. On the Recruit and Pro plans the Sites column has nothing to match against, so leave it out of your file.
6. What are the "Settings for all"?
One setting, applied to every category in the import: the category chatroom.
- Enable category-level chat gives the whole category one chatroom rather than a separate one per opportunity. Every profile approved for at least one opportunity in that category is added automatically, and later approvals keep syncing in.
- Announcements only restricts posting to admins. Users receive the messages as announcements.
You can change both per category afterwards.
7. Do I have to import categories before I import opportunities?
No. Both orders work, and you decide which suits you.
The opportunities importer has a Category column of its own, and on its own Match your file step every category name in that file gets one of three answers:
- Match it to a category that already exists in Vome.
- Create it, if it is not there yet. You pick one cover photo theme that every category created by that import will use.
- Skip it, in which case those opportunities fall back to the default category you choose for the batch.
So if your opportunity spreadsheet already names the categories you want, you can import the opportunities on their own and let that step build the structure as it goes. See How do I import opportunities from a spreadsheet? for that route.
Use this importer instead when you want your categories to carry more than a name. Here a category arrives with its description, its own cover photo and its site links, straight from your file. It is also the better order when your structure is settled before the opportunities are, or when the same categories will be filled by several separate imports.
8. What if a title already exists in Vome?
Vome warns you on the review step and lists the titles it recognised. It does not stop you.
An import never updates an existing category. A title that already exists is created as a second, separate category. Nothing existing is changed, merged or overwritten. Duplicate titles inside one file are caught and skipped, but a clash with a category already in Vome is not.
Summary
- Opportunities module, Categories, then Create category and Import categories.
- One row per category, up to 500 rows, .xlsx or .csv. Title is the only required column.
- Description, Cover and Sites are optional.
- Cover photos are matched to your theme library by name, never created, and a default cover fills the gaps.
- Sites can be matched or created, with one access level applied to every site link.
- Rows with no title, or a title repeated earlier in the file, are skipped. The rest still imports.
- You do not have to import categories first. The opportunities importer can match categories you already have, or create new ones as it goes, so use this importer when you want descriptions, per-category covers and site links as well.
- An imported category starts empty, and a title that already exists is created again rather than updated.