Importing Contacts

Importing your contacts into Oncord is an easy process.

You can import contacts from an Excel spreadsheet or “CSV file”. Most CRM systems, e-mail marketing platforms, and accounting software will allow you to export your contacts as a CSV file, which you can then import into Oncord.

The Process

1) Examine and Clean the Data to Import

As a first step, open your spreadsheet to view the contact data. We recommend using Microsoft Excel to edit CSV files, however you may use Google Sheets as an alternative.

You will see all of your contacts listed. An important step is to examine your data to ensure that fields / columns are setup correctly.

Each field should be separated into different columns. For instance, first and last names should appear in separate columns. For addresses, there should be separate fields for the address line, the suburb or town, the postcode, and the country.

If any fields are merged together, you can use the “Text to Columns” feature of Excel which allows you to split columns by spaces in the data.

Within Excel, the Text to Columns tool can be used to split up columns

2) Marketing Subscription Status and Consent

When importing, the system will by default subscribe new contacts to receive e-mail and sms marketing messages. If you do not want this or do not have consent to send to those contacts, create a column in your CSV file called “Email marketing status”. In this column, you can specify three subscription options: ‘pending’, ‘subscribed’ or ‘unsubscribed’.

pending - used for new contacts who you don’t have consent to send to.
subscribed - used for contacts you do have consent to send to.
unsubscribed - used for contacts who were once subscribed but have chosen to opt-out.

If you are unsure about whether you have consent to send marketing campaigns, please consult your local spam act or seek legal advice.

3) Save as a CSV File

When you have finished examining and updated the spreadsheet, save the CSV file. In Excel, you may need to do this by going File -> Save as and choose the CSV UTF-8 (Comma delimited) option.

4) Import Into Oncord

Now that you have prepared your data, its time to import!

It is recommended that for any import, you should create a new group to import these contacts into. To create a new group, login to Oncord, and select the Groups link in the left sidebar.

When you are ready to import your contacts, select the “Contacts” link in the left sidebar, and click the “Import” button at the top of the screen.

Choose the recently saved file from your computer and press Next configure the import.

Specify whether your spreadsheet has a “heading row” (the first row in your spreadsheet defines the labels of each of the columns).

You are then given options to map the columns in your spreadsheet to contact fields in Oncord. The system will try to automatically map these for you; however you must check and fix them to ensure they are correct.

In the additional settings tab, you can control if the emails are to be validated during import, to ignore or import contacts without emails addresses, and whether to override contacts that already exist in the database.

You will likely also want to add the contacts to a group.

Once you have configured the import, the system will show you a preview of how it is going to import the data.
Click on the link up the top to see which contacts will be imported, merged, and skipped.

After importing contacts, you can take advantage of Oncord’s powerful marketing and management tools.
It’s a quick, simple process and you will be ready to go in no time!

Additional Import Information

Companies and Relationships

If you specify a "Company" column in your CSV file, contacts will be linked by the relationship type "Employee" to the Company record.

In the following example:

Jane will be created as an Individual
Oncord will be created as a Company
A relationship of type Employee is created between the two contacts

If a company with the name you specify doesn't exist, a new contact of type company will be created.
Otherwise if the company record exists, the existing contact will be used.

Importing a spreadsheet of companies and individuals will likely result in more contact records being created than the number of rows in the spreadsheet. This is due to both individual records and company records being created.

Importing Admin Notes

Notes can be imported onto Contact records by mapping a column for the notes.

When importing into Oncord:

After importing, notes will appear in the contacts activity feed:

Phone Numbers

Home, work, and mobile numbers can be imported with or without the country extension.

Where contacts are imported without the country extension, Oncord will use your country (ie. the country of the logged-in administrator processing the import).

If you are importing international numbers, you must include the country extension.

All common formats are recognised:
0412345678
0412 345 678
0412-345-678
(0412)-345-678
0412345678
61412345678
+61412345678

If you import the above list within Australia (+61), all will be resolved to E164:
61412345678

If you import the following list within UK (+44):
0412345678
0412 345 678
0412-345-678
(0412)-345-678
0412345678

They will resolve to:
44412345678

Except the last two, which are internationally prefixed so will stay:
61412345678
+61412345678

Date Formats

We recommend formatting all dates as follows:
YYYY-MM-DD

If a time component is included, it should be in UTC time:
YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS

If you do not use the above formats, the system will attempt to guess the format of the date. This can cause incorrect swapping of day and month fields (due to the difference between American vs British formatting of dates).