Importacular Troubleshooting Guide for New Users

When you run the Validation or the Import stages, you will receive a summary of what happened onscreen. If there are exceptions, look to the newly created/updated Control Report that will provide you with an explanation as to the nature of the exception. Most should be self-explanatory and will point you to the area within your template to look at.

If you are unsure what the Exception description means, you can search the error on our knowledgebase for more details

Importacular processes one record at a time, one mapped field at a time. When it comes across an exception, it records it and then moves on to the next record. Not the next field within that record. It is very common for users (even Importacular experts) to have to run through the Validation process several times before all exceptions are resolved. 

Though this can appear tiresome, this process ensures that Importacular is working exactly how you want it to. To help reduce the amount of time you spend writing and adjusting a template you might want to consider purchasing Onboarding Training or our new Template Writing Service (get in touch for more details and a quote)

You might want to consider reviewing the Criteria Sets within your template or your default Criteria Sets. Criteria Sets tell Importacular what fields to match on from within Raiser’s Edge and how stringently they should be applied. These fields also have to be mapped, from within the template, to a relevant field found in your data source. 

For Example, if you want Importacular to find an Exact match on records with the same email address found within your Data Source, you need to have set up an email address mapping to the field in your data source that contains email addresses.

If Importacular doesn’t find a suitable match, based on your criteria sets, it sets the records as ‘create’. If you feel there are too many of them, your Criteria Sets may be too strict or it can’t find the relevant fields to match on.

You might want to consider reviewing the Criteria Sets within your template or your Default Criteria Set. Criteria Sets tell Importacular what fields to match on from within Raiser’s Edge. Each Criteria Set can be arranged in order so that Importacular knows which Criteria Set to look at first and then next and so on.

You can also adjust your Criteria Sets to how strict they should be applied: Exact, Good or Poor. Exact and Good settings will return records with a status of ‘Update’ in your Data Review Screen.  A ‘Poor’ setting will produce ‘decides’ in your Data Review Screen.

The more fields you include in each of your Criteria Sets, the more precise the matching will become, but you will increase the probability that Importacular will not find an Exact or Good match, thus producing more records to ‘create’ or more records to make decisions on.

The fewer fields you include in each of your Criteria Sets, the less precise the matching will become, and might increase the number of ‘decides’ that Importacular asks you to consider (if set to ‘Poor’) or the wrong records being updated.

Criteria Sets are a balancing act based on the nature of your data in RE, the data you are trying to import and the amount of time you are willing to spend on the Data Review Screen. Though Zeidman can help you figure this out, you are the best person to know and understand what balance to strike with your data.

You might want to consider reviewing the Criteria Sets within your template or your default Criteria Set. Criteria Sets tell Importacular what fields to match on from within Raiser’s Edge. Each Criteria Set can be arranged in order so that Importacular knows which Criteria Set to look at first and then next, until all Criteria Sets have been applied to each record. If Importacular can’t find an Exact, Good or Poor match, it will set that record as ‘create’ in the Data Review Screen and import it as a new record if you don’t change it.

We would always recommend you test and fully utilise the Validation step before committing to an actual import, but to deal with your duplicates, consider using Blackbaud’s ‘Duplicate Constituent Management Tool’ found within Raiser’s Edge ‘Admin’ section.

There are a few things this could be. Your template might be set to only update those fields for new constituent or pre-existing; the field might have a condition on it that only updates if another field is populated; or the data source might not contain the information you want to import.

Whatever it might be, we always recommend testing your import first on just a small selection of records. Complete the Validation and Import steps and then go into your Raiser’ Edge and exploring each of the records you have added/updated to make sure the import worked as you expected. If you spot any anomalies, head back to your template and to the relevant areas to explore further. Also, double-check your data source to ensure that what you are trying to import is in order.

Yes, there is a better way. In fact, we would encourage you to try and avoid touching your data files at all, prior to importing. It increases the risk of human error.

Instead, Importacular has a wide range of fields settings and ‘Data Transformation’ tools for you to use. Some as simple a checking/ticking a box.

We have created lots of User Guides and Knowledgebase articles to help you work out the best settings and data transformations for you, but here is a brief list of some of the option available to you, that all come as standard:

1. Choose to only import new record
2. Choose to only update existing records
3. Change the date format into something Raiser’s Edge will understand.
4. Change the text format to all Upper Case, all Lower Case or to Proper Casing (first letter is upper case, the rest are lower case)
5. Change Postal Codes and Zip Codes into the standard their format
6. Add a zero to the beginning of a telephone number
7. Change abbreviations in your data source into something suitable for Raiser’s Edge, or vice versa (a common use for this is change Country abbreviations into Country names, e.g., UK to United Kingdom)
8. Choose to import/not import a field based on the content of another field

Importacular will import almost anything onto a Constituent record, however, since Funds, Appeals, Campaigns and Attribute Categories are managed separately within Raiser’s Edge, Importacular can only apply them to a Constituent record.

This is also true of adding New Events, Fee New Membership Categories and Programs. 

However, Importacular is able to add to or update a table.

As long as the Attribute is already set up within your Raiser’s Edge with a table, you can update that table. Within the Attribute Description field setting, you have three options available to you:

1. Attempt to add New Table Entries
2. Make inactive Table Entries Active
3. Ignore the value

If you have suitable rights within your Raiser’s Edge, by selecting options 1 and/or 2 will update the relevant table.

You might want to consider reviewing the Criteria Sets within your template or your default Criteria Sets. Criteria Sets tell Importacular what fields to match on from within Raiser’s Edge and how stringently they should be applied. These fields also have to be mapped, from within the template, to a relevant field found in your data source. 

For Example, if you want Importacular to find an Exact match on records with the same email address found within your Data Source, you need to have set up an email address mapping to the field in your data source that contains email addresses.

Without these important fields, Importacular won’t know what to look to for comparison and will just skip over it.