Importing Users from Another Service

In this article, we'll walk you through the process of importing one of your existing lists of users into Appreciation Engine.

Before starting, note that you need a CSV file with a specific set of columns that include specific data about the users. You can reference the required formatting from our User Import Table Format article.

Step 1: Contact AE Support

At this time, Appreciation Engine needs to give you access to a private FTP address before you can successfully import users from other services.

Before you start Step 2, we recommend that you reach out to the AE support team so they can set up an FTP drop site for you. 

Step 2: Prepare the Import Files

First, we will include your properly formatted users.csv  inside of a .zip  file. Name the .zip  file using your preferred label for a campaign or user segment.

1. Name the user import file users.csv.
2. Check that the contents of users.csv follows the format specified in the User Import Table Format article.
3. Create a .zip  file with the users.csv  inside.
4. Give the .zip  file a meaningful name that corresponds with your campaign or user segment. For example, Spiderman Fans.zip .

importCode

The label that you give your .zip  file will be converted to an importCode. This means you can filter all of your users and find the ones from this specific import in the future.

Note that any spaces or underscores in your label will be converted to dots. If your .zip  was named Spiderman Fans.zip , the corresponding importCode would be Spiderman.Fans .

Step 3: Import Users Using SFTP

For this step, you'll need an FTP client like FileZilla or CyberDuck and access to the FTP drop site that the AE support team set up for you in Step 1. 

Each of your import groups and sources will have their own FTP site. You will need to make sure that you are uploading the correct .zip  file to the correct FTP site.

Step 4: Monitor the Upload Process

Once a zip file is uploaded to the ftp site, AE will begin to process the import. First, the .zip  file will be uncompressed to an import folder.

The name of the new folder will be the name of your .zip  file, but with any spaces converted into underscores. For example, if your .zip  file was named Spiderman Fans.zip  the new folder will be named Spiderman_Fans . 

Here's some more information about the upload process:

• Users are imported line by line at around 25 users per minute.
• An import counter file will count the users as they are processed for import. You may need to refresh the view in your FTP client or reconnect to check the status. 
• Users will appear in Appreciation Engine while they are being processed.
• If there is an error while importing a specific user, it will be appended to the error log.
• Once the import is complete, the processing text will be replaced with "done".

Error Log

Once an import is complete, you can look inside the import folder for the error log, named error_log.csv .

You can view the error log in any text editor or spreadsheet application. Using a spreadsheet application like Microsoft Excel will present the error log with cleaner, distinct columns for the timestamp, the error, and the specific error message.

For user-specific errors, the unique identifier for the user will be included.

Step 5: Upload Corrected Data (Optional)

After reviewing and correcting any problems with a specific user's data, you can repeat Steps 3 and 4 by re-uploading the files. Alternatively, you can create new files that contain just the problematic data.

If there are only a few errors during your initial upload, it would be much faster to create a new file.

If you do choose to create new files, be sure to name the files with the same name that you used initially. Doing this will ensure that your new upload uses the same importCode as before.