How do I mass import profiles into my database?
Overview
The Database is where every person your organization works with lives. If you are moving to Vome from another system, or from a pile of spreadsheets, the mass importer brings that whole list in at once: you upload a file, tell Vome what each of your columns means, fix anything that will not import, apply whatever those people have in common, and decide whether to invite them to claim their account.
One row becomes one profile, and you can import up to 10,000 rows per upload.
Split your list before you import it. Everything on the Customize & Assign step is applied to the whole file. If half your list should be tagged one way and half another, that is two imports, not one.
1. Where do I find the mass importer?
Go to the Database module, open the Create profiles button, and choose Mass import.
The same menu holds Single profile, which adds one person by hand.
2. What are the steps?
There are five, and you can go back to any of them until the last one.
- Upload file. Your spreadsheet.
- Map fields. Match each of your column titles to a Vome field.
- Check file errors. Vome validates the file and lists anything that will not import.
- Customize & Assign. Import settings, default values, and the bulk assignments applied to everyone in the file.
- Review & Save. The summary, the invitation settings, and the button that actually runs it.
3. 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 person.
Three columns are required:
- First Name
- Last Name
A row with no email address cannot be imported, so delete that row from your file rather than leaving the cell blank.
There is a template attached to this article, and the same one is offered on the upload step. It carries the columns Vome knows about:
- Email, First Name, Last Name, Phone Number, Date Of Birth, Address.
- Emergency Contact Name, Emergency Contact Phone Number, Emergency Contact Relationship.
- Gender, Gender Text, Occupation, Organization, Profile Image.
- Start Date, Hours Logged (Off-Vome).
- Opportunities, Groups, Group Role, Kiosk PIN.
You do not have to use the template. Your own Excel or CSV file works, because the Map fields step is where you tell Vome what your columns mean. The template is worth downloading anyway, as a reference for the formats: dates are written YYYY-MM-DD, and Gender and Occupation are written as numbers, with the accepted values shown in the template's own column titles. Group Role is more forgiving and takes either a number or a word, so 0, 1, Member and Leader are all understood.
Every column in your file has to be mapped to a Vome field before you can continue, so delete columns you do not want to bring over rather than leaving them in.
4. How do the Opportunities, Groups and Group Role columns behave?
They are the three columns that point at other records, and they do not all work the same way.
- Opportunities can only be matched, never created. An opportunity needs its own schedule, recruitment settings and shifts, so the importer will not invent one from a name in a cell. A name that matches nothing is reported and skipped, and a name that matches more than one opportunity blocks the import until you say which you meant.
- Groups can be matched or created. A group name Vome does not recognise is either created or skipped, depending on what you choose on the Customize & Assign step, and creating a large number at once asks you to confirm first.
- Group Role only means anything next to a Groups column. On its own it is ignored, and Vome tells you so rather than failing quietly.
You also set a default group role, used whenever your file does not say. If you map no Group Role column at all, everyone joins their group with that role. If you map one and leave a cell blank, that person joins with the default too, unless they are already in the group, in which case the role they already have is left alone.
A column and a bulk assignment are additive rather than competing. If your file has an Opportunities column and you also pick an opportunity for the whole batch on the Customize & Assign step, people get both.
Sites, profile tags, shifts and sequences are not columns. There is no way to set them per row. They are only ever assigned to the whole file from the Customize & Assign step, which is another reason to split your lists before you import.
Custom fields need the Enterprise or Ultimate plan. On those plans your own custom fields appear in the Map fields dropdown alongside the standard ones, so data that has nowhere else to go can still come across.
5. What happens if someone in my file is already in Vome?
You decide, on the Customize & Assign step.
- Update existing profiles with new data writes what is in your file over what is on the profile.
- Skip them leaves those profiles exactly as they are and imports only the new people.
Vome matches on Email by default. On the Enterprise and Ultimate plans you can match on a Unique ID field from your database instead, which is the better option when the same person reaches you under more than one email address.
One field is never changed by an import: the email address itself. It is what identifies the profile, so a person's email is updated on their profile rather than through a spreadsheet.
If you are updating, there is one setting worth reading twice: don't update empty values. Leave it on and a blank cell in your spreadsheet is ignored. Turn it off and a blank cell wipes whatever Vome already had in that field.
6. What is the Customize & Assign step for?
Two things beyond the duplicate handling above.
Default values. For any Vome field your spreadsheet has no column for, you can set one value that everyone in this import gets. Useful when a whole list shares something your old system never recorded.
Assign actions. Everyone in the file can be assigned, in bulk, to profile tags, opportunities, shifts, groups, sequences and sites. This is the fastest way to land people somewhere useful rather than in an undifferentiated list.
On profiles that already exist, bulk assignments are added to what those people already have. They do not replace existing assignments.
7. What about hours my people logged before they were on Vome?
Bring them over with the Hours Logged (Off-Vome) column. This matters most when you are arriving from another system that has been tracking service hours for years, because without it everyone starts at zero and your long-serving people look brand new.
What the column is:
- One number per person, their lifetime total of hours done outside Vome. Decimals are fine.
- The profile then shows two figures, Hours Logged (On-Vome) and Hours Logged (Off-Vome), and the person's total is the two added together. So recognition, impact reporting and anything else that reads total hours will reflect the full history rather than only what happened since you switched.
- It is available as a Database column and comes out in a profile export, and you can edit it on any profile afterwards.
What the column is not:
- It is a total, not a history. It does not create shifts, attendance records or hour claims, and nothing from it appears in your Schedule. If you need the detail of who did what and when, keep an export of your old system somewhere you can get at it.
- It is not attached to an opportunity, so those hours will not show up in a report broken down by opportunity or by category.
Pair it with the Start Date column, which is the date the person actually started with you. Together they are what makes a migrated profile look like the veteran it belongs to rather than a sign-up from this week.
Off-Vome hours are set, not added. The value in your file becomes the value on the profile. So if you re-run an import with Update existing profiles turned on, send the person's new lifetime total, not the hours they have accumulated since the last import, or you will replace the bigger number with the smaller one.
8. What if my file has errors?
The Check file errors step lists every one of them with its row number. Nothing is imported until they are gone.
Fix them in your spreadsheet and upload the corrected file from that same step. The corrected file replaces the old one, and you are taken back to Map fields to confirm the columns, so keep your column titles the same between the two versions.
9. Do the people I import get an email?
Only if you ask for it, on the Review & Save step.
Leave Invite all profiles to claim their Vome account off and the profiles simply appear in your database. Nobody is contacted, which is usually what you want on a first migration while you are still tidying up.
Turn it on and everyone in the import is emailed an invitation to join Vome. You can add a custom welcome message, and set a language preference so their emails and notifications arrive in the right language from the start. Once someone creates their account and accepts, their profile status changes from Invited to Vome User.
Invitations go out for real, and cannot be recalled. On a large migration, import quietly first, check the data landed the way you expected, and invite people afterwards from the database once you are happy.
Summary
- Database module, Create profiles, then Mass import.
- Five steps: Upload file, Map fields, Check file errors, Customize & Assign, Review & Save.
- .xlsx or .csv, up to 10,000 rows per upload. First Name, Last Name and Email are required.
- Use the template attached to this article or your own file, but every column has to be mapped to a Vome field.
- An Opportunities column can only match, never create. A Groups column can do both. Group Role does nothing without Groups, and takes 0, 1, Member or Leader.
- Sites, profile tags, shifts and sequences have no column and are only assigned to the whole file.
- Existing profiles are matched on Email, or on a Unique ID field on Enterprise and Ultimate, and you choose whether to update them or skip them. The email address itself is never overwritten.
- Bring historical service hours across with Hours Logged (Off-Vome) and Start Date. Off-Vome hours count towards a person's total but are not tied to shifts or opportunities.
- Nobody is emailed unless you turn invitations on at the last step.