Date: Thursday, Nov 5
Time: 11:30a ET / 2:30p PT
Learn how to import contacts, update existing records, and manage duplicate detection in CiviCRM with confidence.
Importing contact data is a routine part of managing a nonprofit CRM, but it’s also an opportunity for things to go wrong. Import the wrong way, and you could end up with duplicate contacts, outdated information overwriting accurate records, or existing contact information being unintentionally changed.
The good news? CiviCRM provides tools to help you avoid these problems. Understanding how they work can make importing data easier, safer, and more useful for your organization.
In this training session, we’ll walk through the CiviCRM contact import process and explore how to use deduplication rules and import settings to manage your data effectively.
What You’ll Learn
Whether you’re importing a new contact list or updating information for people already in your database, this session will help you make more informed decisions about how CiviCRM handles your data.
We’ll cover:
- Importing contacts into CiviCRM: Learn how to prepare a spreadsheet, upload a CSV file, map fields, and complete an import.
- Understanding deduplication rules: Explore how CiviCRM identifies potential duplicate contacts and the differences between supervised and unsupervised rules.
- Choosing the right duplicate action: Understand when to use Skip, Update, or Fill and why choosing the right option matters.
- Making bulk updates safely: Discover how to use the import interface to update existing records without overwriting valuable information.
- Improving your data management practices: Learn practical techniques for tracking import activity and troubleshooting changes to your database.
A Practical, Hands-On Approach
This session goes beyond explaining individual settings. We’ll follow a realistic example of an organization importing contacts collected at a community fair, then work through different scenarios that call for different import strategies.
You’ll have opportunities to test your understanding, consider which settings make sense for each situation, and see how the choices you make affect your database.