Loading Data from Your Organization's Data Sources

Before you begin loading contact information into InterAction, make sure you have completed the process of analyzing your current environment and determining your strategy for both loading and cleaning the contact information. For details on how to do this, see Overview of Analyzing Your Data and Preparing a Plan.

Initial Data Load Process for Organization-Wide Data Sources

The overall process for loading contact information into InterAction from data sources is the following:

1. Ensure that your InterAction database is configured to include all folders and additional fields to which you intend to add contact information during the data load. If InterAction is not yet configured, do not begin loading your contact information.

   At this point, make sure you at least have your basic configuration set up. You can always find other information your organization needs over time and this can be built in and appended to contacts as necessary.

2. Extract contact data from current data sources. For details, see Extracting Contact Data from Data Sources.

3. Perform any modifications necessary to the files containing contact information to prepare them to be loaded into InterAction.

   For example, this may include any of the following:

   • Defining a unique contact identifier for each contact to identify the contact in the data source from which it originated. See Creating Unique Contact Identifiers (UCI) for more information.
   • Managing any fields that should be split out or combined. For example, the data file may have a person’s entire name in one field.
   • Adding information to contacts. For example, if all the contacts in a data file are clients, you can add a value to a field to automatically add the contacts to the Client contact type.

   If you choose to use a third party to help you with your data load and cleansing effort, they may be able to perform these and other modifications to the data prior to bringing it into InterAction.

4. Configure the tool you are using to load the contact data into InterAction.

   • If you are using the import feature, define your import mapping instructions for each data file. If all data files are structured the same, you may be able to use one import mapping instruction for all data files.

     If you use the Windows Client to import contacts, see Creating and Editing Import Mapping Instructions. If you use Advanced Import, see Creating and Editing Advanced Import Mapping Instructions.

   • If you are using Application Collaboration, define your data sources for loading contact information. For details, see Creating and Editing Data Sources.
5. Load the contact data from the data files into InterAction.