Data Import

Data Import brings records into Xperios from a spreadsheet, a few hundred at a time rather than one at a time by hand. It is how you load a new service's teachers, a term's instruments, or a set of schools.

What you can import

Teachers · Resources · Schools · Organisations · Activities · Groups · Group Members

Schools and Organisations are separate imports, as are Groups and Group Members, because each pair holds genuinely different information.

How it works

Choose the Import type, then work down the page.

1. Start from the template

Download the template for the type you are importing. It arrives as a spreadsheet with the right columns, in the right order, annotated so you can see what is expected of each.

The column headings are colour-coded:

Colour	Meaning
Red	Mandatory — every row must have a value
Green	At least one of the green columns must be filled in

The green grouping is how Xperios asks for "some way of contacting this person": you must provide at least one of Address Line 1, Post Code, Land Line or Mobile, but it does not mind which.

You can add columns of your own — notes to yourself while you work — and they are ignored. Only the standard columns are read.

2. Fill it in and upload it

Enter your data and upload the file.

The spreadsheet is read in your browser, so the file itself never leaves your machine — only the rows, as data. Nothing is saved at this point.

3. Review and import

Every row is checked before anything is written, and you are shown what the import will do. Rows with problems are reported so you can correct them.

Fix the spreadsheet and upload it again, as many times as it takes. Nothing is written until you are satisfied and run the import.

4. Results

When it runs you get the Import results — what was imported and what was not, row by row.

Import in small batches first

Try ten rows before you try a thousand. Problems that affect every row show up just as clearly, and you have far less to unpick if something is not as you expected.

Coming from the desktop?

Data Import replaces the same feature in the old desktop client. Every import type has moved across except Study, which is no longer needed.