CiviCRM Community Forums (archive)

We are looking at the question of how to import data from excel files into CiviCRM. Our system has quite a lot of custom fields and custom relationships (containing custom attributes).

I've done some reading here in the forum, and it doesn't seem like there is a possibility to import other fields than the standard fields into the database with the standard import routine. Am I right? Will there be a possibility to do it in v3.0?

If there is none, my best bet is to look at writing manual sql import scripts ... or are there any other solutions on how to import such data?

I think that the possibility of importing data into custom fields and relationships is a key feature for the import. Without this the whole import functionality doesn't make too much sense for me.

please play around with the import process and get a better idea of what/how it does. You should also check the docs (http://wiki.civicrm.org/) and the book out: http://en.flossmanuals.net/CiviCRM)

import handles both custom fields and relationships fairly nicely

lobo

I looked through the import another time: I don't know what was going on yesterday, but today the custom fields are available. Maybe I was just blind or didn't have enough coffee. Sorry about that.

There's still another thing though that I can't figure out: We have a relation that is called "coaches team" which is Individual -> Organization. This relation has an attribute called "Season" so that we know in which season this relation was established, and then it has a "Position" attribute (head coach, ass. coach, etc.).

Now when I import the data, I see the relation "coaches team" under "related contact info". When I select it though, there is no option to assign the field to the "Season" nor "Position" attribute of the relation. Am I blind again, or is there really no option like this? The only options that I see are the fields (both standard and custom) of the organization.

import does not import custom data for relationship. You'll need to write a custom script for that

lobo

Is there a chance that future versions will be capable of doing that? If yes, when approximately?

this is currently not planned for a future version

lobo

thanks. I have another related question: What about the import of activities? Can you do it? If no, is it planned?

So far I just saw import of contacts. What we have is sign up sheet in our drupal cms. Is there a good way how I can import the activity (automatically or manually) "sign up" into CiviCRM?