Author Topic: my contact imports have company names - how/where to import those? (Read 2867 times)

webguy2 · October 15, 2008, 01:41:58 pm

Most of my contacts have companies they work for and included in the import file. I do not see a field with which to match it during the import process. My data looks like:

externalID, company_name, first_name, last_name,...

Any ideas how to capture the company data in the record? Do I have to create a custom field?

It is not important that companies are related to each other.

Thanks.

emilyf · October 15, 2008, 01:57:54 pm

You would import it as 'Employee of' I believe....

A good thing to do is always backup your site before imports

webguy2 · October 15, 2008, 04:28:46 pm

right on - thanks!

petednz · October 16, 2008, 02:29:42 am

May have changed with 2.1 but thought it worked best to import the organisations, then import the individuals with 'employee of' to the organisation.

webguy2 · October 16, 2008, 06:33:32 am

Do I have to import everyone's company name first - thousands - then import the contact specifying each contacts' employer? The way I was employer of, was it dropped down a second drop down list with nothing in it.

I also thought organization was the non-profit organization they belonged to.

I think the only logical decision here is to add a custom field called "employer". Unless someone makes a strong argument otherwise. That other way seems convoluted to me.

Thoughts?

xavier · October 16, 2008, 08:30:19 am

Hi,

I'd suggest to use the Employee of on the import, that way you have a record for each organisation, and can find all the employees of that organisation in the relationship tab.

You don't have to create the org first, it will create it directly if they don't exist (only the name, all the other fields are going to be empty). However, it might be beneficial to import your contacts first as organisations, so they have the address set. Depends of your datas and what you want to do.

X+

webguy2 · October 16, 2008, 08:38:01 am

Xavier = thanks but I am completely lost now. You're saying to import the same contact data twice and it will pick out the organizations the first time and the contact data the second?

Here's one of my misunderstandings about organizations, I thought there was ONE organization database and it was the non-profit this civicrm software was used use at this non-profit.

Are the companies the contacts work for organizations also? If so, that blows my mind, but that's beside the point.

Are you saying to import my contact list first, that has in it the name of the company they work for, and it will somehow pick the company name out of the list? The I import it again and it will asociate the contacts with the companies?

petednz · October 16, 2008, 01:03:48 pm

civiCRM has contacts who can either be
- Individuals
- Organisations
- Households

Individuals can be 'employee of' an Organisation but the Organisation needs to exist.

When you do an Import you are either importing to an Individual type contact, or an Org or a H.hold.

My understanding was that you first import the columns of data that relate to your organisation; name, address etc (ie you set up your Organisation as a contact)

Then you import the 'employees' as Individuals, and have a column with the Organisation Name and on the Import options import that field to 'employee of + organisation name'.

HTH

petednz · October 16, 2008, 01:06:10 pm

You may also want to read this http://forum.civicrm.org/index.php/topic,5011.0.html though I have no idea if what he was aiming to do worked.

webguy2 · October 16, 2008, 02:18:10 pm

Thanks, for your help!

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Author Topic: my contact imports have company names - how/where to import those? (Read 2867 times)

webguy2

my contact imports have company names - how/where to import those?

emilyf

Re: my contact imports have company names - how/where to import those?

webguy2

Re: my contact imports have company names - how/where to import those?

petednz

Re: my contact imports have company names - how/where to import those?

webguy2

Re: my contact imports have company names - how/where to import those?

xavier

Re: my contact imports have company names - how/where to import those?

webguy2

Re: my contact imports have company names - how/where to import those?

petednz

Re: my contact imports have company names - how/where to import those?

petednz

Re: my contact imports have company names - how/where to import those?

webguy2

Re: my contact imports have company names - how/where to import those?