Importing Resources
Before You Begin
Ensure that you are familiar with the overview and "Before you Begin" requirements listed on the Resource Import Tool page.
For this walkthrough, we will be using the Contact Import Sample .csv available on the Import Templates page as an example, and associating it to an existing Section called "Contact" having the fields: First Name, Last Name, Email, 2nd Email, Phone, 2nd Phone, Mobile Phone, Role, and Time Zone.
To create this Section, or edit an existing Section, refer to Working With Resources, Customizing Sections, and Customizing Fields.
When you are ready to begin, open the Resource Importer and proceed to Step 1.
Step 1: Upload your .csv data file
Under the "File" Menu, select "Open .csv". Browse to and select your UTF-8 encoded data file.
After hitting "OK", your file should be visible in the workspace, as well as listed under "Open Files" like this:
Step 2: Open a Template Grid from an existing Section
Under the "Data" menu, select "Create Sheet from Section".
The Resource Browser will pop up, showing the list of Sections currently available in Provision. Clicking on the "Details" button will show the fields for that Section.
Verify that the Section and available fields match the type of data you are trying to import. In this case, the Section "Contact" has the fields that correlate to our spreadsheet data.
Select "Create Grid" to create a grid based off this Section.
When the Section Grid has been created, required fields will show in blue font with (required) after the header, in this case, "Name" is a required field. The "Custom ID" field is metadata allowing for a unique ID to be associated with each entry, but is not necessary for a successful import. The remainder of the headers directly match the Section's fields.
Step 3: Reorder .csv columns to match the Section Grid column order
One of the most important steps is to reorder the columns from the .csv data to match the order of the Section Grid - think of the importer as copying and pasting the csv data into the "Contact" Section grid- we want to ensure that the data is under the correct headers! There are a couple of methods you can use to reorder columns in the Resource Importer:
A) Click on the column header to Drag and Drop to the desired location, OR
B) Right click on any row and select "Set Columns". Then, drag and drop the column header bubbles into the desired order, and hit "OK".
Step 4: Add or Edit data as needed
As you may have noticed in Step 3, with this example we have a couple of columns that don't quite match up to the Section Grid. The "Title" column in the .csv data is an additional column we are not tracking in our Section. Also, although we have a "First Name" and "Last Name", we are missing a data column for the top-level "Name" required in the Section Grid. Think of the "Name" as the information you would want to search for in Provision. We wouldn't want to search just for "Bob" or "Smith" when looking down a list of names, so we will create a "Name" column that concatenates first and last name, to read "Bob Smith".
A) To hide extraneous column information:
Right click on a header and deselect the check box for the column you wish to hide. In this case, we want to hide "Title".
B) To Add / Edit data in the Resource Importer: