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This article pertains to Development 3.
Overview
The Veracross Data Importer allows schools to define and update the opportunity records between constituents and fundraising activities for schools who are using Development 3.0 functionality. This import type is considered both an importer and an updater — it allows users to both define new opportunity record values and update existing opportunity records by using the "overwrite" fields in the import template. To read more about Development 3.0 functionality, please read our documentation here.
Uploading Opportunities involves the following two steps:
- Preparing the data for upload using the Opportunity import type template, which is provided before data import on the Importer site.
- Uploading the data using the Veracross Data Importer.
Preparing the Data for Upload
The user must prepare a comma separated value (CSV) file containing all data to import. This file must contain all columns in the order listed below, even if no content is populated in the columns. If there is no content in a column, that row must be left blank.
Fields in the Import Type Template
There are three columns that determine whether or not certain fields on the import type are ignored when encountering data already in place on an opportunity record or whether the values in the import will, instead, overwrite existing data on opportunity records. These values and the fields that they affect are:
- overwrite_existing_solicitors — affects the staff_solicitor_id field
- overwrite_existing_targets — affects the target_low, target, target_high, and target_anticipated fields
- overwrite_existing_segment — affects the segment_id field
If the value of one of these overwrite columns is set as "yes", "true", or "1", then the values from corresponding column on the csv will overwrite the already existing value on the Opportunity record. If the value of one of these overwrite columns is "yes" and the corresponding column is left blank, the value on the opportunity record will not be overwritten (or cleared).
All required fields are designated as such in the Value Considerations column.
| Column (Field) Name | Value Considerations |
|---|---|
| fundraising_activity_id | Required field. Numeric value. The ID of the fundraising activity this Opportunity should be associated with. Find this as the Fundraising Activity ID field in this Find Fundraising Activities query. |
| constituent_id | Required field. Numeric value. The ID of the constituent this Opportunity should be associated with. Find this as the Constituent ID field in this Find Constituents query. |
| solicitor_1_id | Numeric value. The Person ID of the staff solicitor who is assigned as the primary solicitor for this opportunity. Person IDs can be found in a standard Find Person query. |
| solicitor_2_id | Numeric value. The Person ID of the staff solicitor who is assigned as the secondary solicitor for this opportunity. Person IDs can be found in a standard Find Person query. |
| overwrite_existing_solicitors | The value in this field determines if the value in the staff_solicitor_id column of this import overwrites an existing staff solicitor on the opportunity record. If this value is one of the following, then the value in the staff_solicitor_id column of this import overwrites existing values on the opportunity record (otherwise, it will not):
If this is marked as a "yes" option and the staff_solicitor_id column in the import is blank, the staff solicitor on the opportunity record will not be altered or cleared. |
| target_low | Numeric value. This column corresponds to the "Low Amount" field in the Opportunity Targets & Giving section of the General tab of an Opportunity record. |
| target | Numeric value. This column corresponds to the "Target Amount" field in the Opportunity Targets & Giving section of the General tab of an Opportunity record. |
| target_high | Numeric value. This column corresponds to the "High Amount" field in the Opportunity Targets & Giving section of the General tab of an Opportunity record. |
| target_anticipated | Numeric value. This column corresponds to the "Anticipated Amount" field in the Opportunity Targets & Giving section of the General tab of an Opportunity record. |
| overwrite_existing_targets | The value in this field determines if the values in the target_low, target, target_high, and target_anticipated columns of this import overwrite existing values on the opportunity record. If this value is one of the following, then the values in the target_low, target, target_high, and targt_oppoortunity columns of this import overwrite existing values on the opportunity record (otherwise, it will not):
If this is marked as a "yes" option and a column in the import is blank, the corresponding value on the opportunity record will not be altered or cleared. |
| segment_id | Numeric value. The ID of the fundraising activity segment type that this Opportunity is associated with. Find this as the Fundraising Activity Segment ID in this Fundraising Segment Types query. |
| overwrite_existing_segment | The value in this field determines if the value in the segment_id column of this import overwrites an existing segment association on the opportunity record. If this value is one of the following, then the value in the segment_id column of this import overwrites existing values on the opportunity record (otherwise, it will not):
If this is marked as a "yes" option and the segment_id column in the import is blank, the associated segment on the opportunity record will not be altered or cleared. |
| status | Text value. This column corresponds with the "Opportunity Status" field in the Campaign Opportunity section of the General tab of an Opportunity record. Find this as the Description field in this Opportunity Statuses query. |
| priority | Text value. This column corresponds with the "Priority" field in the Campaign Opportunity section of the General tab of an Opportunity record. Find this as the Description field in this Opportunity Priorities query. |
| effort | Text value. This column corresponds with the "Effort" field in the Campaign Opportunity section of the General tab of an Opportunity record. Find this as the Description field in this Opportunity Effort Levels query. |
| confidence | Text value. This column corresponds with the "Giving Confidence" field in the Opportunity Targets & Giving section of the General tab of an Opportunity record. Find this as the Description field in this Opportunity Confidence Levels query. |
| notes | Text value. This column corresponds to the "Opportunity Notes" field on the General tab of an opportunity record. This field has no defined character limit. |
Additional Considerations
Workflows
To help ease the workflow of constantly updating Opportunity records in batch, you can use the Update Opportunities via Importer query on the Development: Configuration homepage. This pulls in all required fields into the import template (except for the "overwrite"-style columns) and allows you to apply different criteria to the query to filter it how you'd like. A workflow arising from this functionality would look like this:
- Open up the Update Opportunities via Importer query from the Development: Configuration homepage, apply the criteria you'd like to filter the query by, run the query, and then export the results to csv using the Export to CSV or Export to Excel procedures in the Action menu.
- Open the exported csv file and add in the three "overwrite"-style columns to the spreadsheet to make it the proper format for the Import tool to recognize.
- Update any fields in the spreadsheet that you need to update the opportunities for and save the changes you've made to the file.
- Use the Veracross Data Importer to import this file back into Axiom with any updates that you may have made to the originally exported spreadsheet.