Sales CRM allows you to import up to 10mb (about 15,000 records) at a time through a .csv . This can be a great way to kickstart your use of Sales CRM, Migrate from another CRM, or scale out the tool.

Who can Import Records?

Do note that only a user with the “Admin” Permission will be able to import records (contacts or accounts) into Sales CRM.

To determine whether you have the right permission, you can check the Settings of the Pipeline and navigate to the “Teams” section. You can find more information about this here: Adding your Team Members

Where to Import

The import functionality can be accessed from the Integration section of Sales CRM.

There, you will see “Import CSV” as an option.

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How to Import

Importing for the first time

The first time you use the Import functionality, do note that you will need to press the “connect” button (either from the integration side or on the import page).

This will automatically create the automation rule to import the .csv data to Contacts and Data when a .csv is uploaded.

Quick note: If you do not press the connect button, this will display the error message : “Import csv app doesn’t have rule”

Viewing your previous imports

In the “Import CSV” section, you will notice the history of your imports.

The most recent import will show its Status as “New” and the other will show either as processing, or done. If you click on “View”, you will be able to see the mapping that was done for those imports. You will also notice the “cancel” option, that option currently does nothing.

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Starting a new import

In the “Import CSV” section, there is option a button on the upper-right section of the screen for a “New Import”.

Clicking on that button will forward you to the next screen where you will be able to upload your csv. You can add your file by either drag-and-dropping it or by clicking on the “upload a file” button. Note that the current limit is of 10mb, which should provide you the possibility of uploading about 15,000 records at once.

If for some reason (unsupported file format, over file capacity, etc.), there will be an error message that will show up in the upper left section of the screen.

Once uploaded (it might take a moment to update the page with the information), you will be able to see, from the upper left section of the screen, the information from the file you uploaded (Filename, Size, Status, Rows, Columns, Created date)

In the lower half of the “Import CSV screen” you will be able to map your CSV file columns to your Sales CRM fields, for Contacts and Accounts.

Sales CRM identifies the first row as “headers”. In other words, the first row from the CSV will name the CSV columns.

If you added some custom fields in your pipeline, you will be able to map your csv columns to them.

Once your mapping is complete, click on the “Start Import” button. A pop-up window will appear, asking if you are sure to want to import the contacts to your pipeline. If you are, press the “OK” button.

Monitoring your import

You can monitor your import from the automation page. There, you will notice that an automation has been automatically created which states that - “When a csv file is uploaded” Then import csv data to Contacts & Accounts”.

This page is quite interesting for two reasons:

1- You can click on the automation to prompt additional options, such as the possibility of adding automation steps.

2- You can click the “Show activity log” in order to view the status of all the latest imports that have been done (Processing, Succeeded, Failed).

Viewing your Imports results

Once the data has been imported, you will find your new records respectively in the Account or the Contacts section of your Pipeline.

An example import result is shown below:

Creating New deals from New contacts

When you first connect the import functionality in your Pipeline, you will also have an additional automation that will be created. This new automation will create a new deal based on the contact’s information that you mapped to it.

The idea is to allow admins to automatically create deals from the new contacts that are being imported, in order t avoid a lot of manual steps.

Here is the automation in more details

Event: When a contact is created

Action: Then convert contact into sales

You will then be asked to map the fields from the Deals to the fields from the Contact that you recently imported.

Do note that you do not need to map a new deal to a contact as this is done automatically by Sales CRM

Complementing the automation

Do note that you can also add additional automation steps to the Contact → Deal automation in order to make it more powerful. Some examples can be:

• Automatically assign the deal to someone

• Automatically have the deals be part of a specific funnel

• Automatically have the deals have a specific stage

• Automatically have the contacts be added to the Mailchimp list