People Import 5 Stages

The videos for the five stages of People Import have been uploaded to the Salesforce User Guide site and are also available in the screen cast side bar of this blog. I have detailed a brief description of these five steps below:

1. Mapping - Select the source file & map the fields (or column names) in the file (ex. spreadsheet) to salesforce fields.

• If the field names match exactly use can use the "automap" button to automatically mach the fields.
• You can also manually drag and drop the names to map the fields
• In this stage you can also choose from field options to update the Insert, Do not update, Update, or Update only if blank for each individual mapping

Helpful Tips

• Be sure to include all required fields on import which would include Last name and Company. For prospective students without a company affiliation use the "last name, first name" in lieu of this value
• Be sure to include the recordtype id to ensure newly created records are affiliated with the appropriately

2. Comparison - Compare the records in the source file against all salesforce records (default) or choice to select a subset of records for comparison.

Helpful Tips

• It is highly suggested you match the incoming records to those of the desired record type
• Matching against a subset of records within the system will not only expedite the elapsed time but can also enhance matching precision

3. Matching - The most involved stage of all five stages where you can create various matching steps to compare source records to those in salesforce in order to avoid importing duplicate records You can match almost any field that you imported in stage 1 of the import process such as matching the first name, last name, email, phone, or address in the source file to those in salesforce (certain fields such as long text areas can't be used in this stage)

• This stage also allows you to adjust the match type settings from "exact" match type to "cleaned account name" or select additional options to loosen matching capabilities with use of "fuzzy" or "alpha clean". For a complete list of match types click here
• You can create multiple matching steps to increase the probability of locating a potential duplicate with Salesforce.
• You can assign the leads matched with each step to a pre-existing salesforce campaign or create a new task for the matching group.
• The "Final Matching conditions" step is where you specify conditions for records in the source file that did not match any of the matching steps. You can choose to import these records as "new leads", "New Contacts" or "Do Nothing"

4. Global Campaigns & Tasks - This step is optional but provides the ability to assign records not matched in Step 3 to a campaign or create a new task for these records.

5. Results & Processing - This stage is where People Import checks for dupes and matched records are retrieved. You can also review, verify, and ultimately commit & update the matched records while importing new leads that were not matched (if specified in "Final Matching Steps" of Stage 3)