Beyond Supporters: Importing to Other Tables

Overview

When to use it

You can actually import entries to any Salsa table, not just the supporter table. For example:

• Add names of supporters who filled out a paper petition to the list of supporters who completed the online version (supporter_action table)
• Import donations which were made offline into your list of donations made in Salsa (donation table)

How to get there

Salsa's standard import tool can is used for this process, but you'll use the Write in table field instead to manually type the name of the table into which you're importing.

NOTE: This operation is only recommended for advanced users. Salsa's public database documentation can be found in our user documentation so you can use this documentation to decide on a table to which to write your data. If you don't know what a database table is, please contact our support team for assistance.

Example: Import Petition Signers

One way to use the write-in feature is to import petition signers or event attendees. This process can be more efficiently accomplished by simply importing a supporter list into a new group, and using the query tool to add the members of that group to the petition or event – however, the outline below should give a sense of the importer's flexible capacity to interact with tables throughout Salsa.

Salsa has a table called supporter_action that establishes the connection between a supporter and an campaign s/he has signed on to. The key fields there are the supporter_key number and the action_key number. Here's how to import your source file (spreadsheet) into this table:

1. Import your file just into the supporter list, putting them all in a group as you do it. No supporters should be in this group except for those you want to add to this petition as signers.
2. Run a query on this group and export all group members.
3. Export this group by querying the group and exporting it. The purpose of these first two steps is to get a supporter_key number in your file, so you'll need to make sure you choose to include it. (You can, actually, export nothing but the supporter_key).
4. Get the action_key number from the Actions section (or from the user-facing page – you can see it in the url).
5. Open up your exported file in a spreadsheet application such as Excel, create a new column, and mass-paste the petition key number into it for all the records you've exported. So you should now have a file with a different supporter key for each line but , the same action key for each line. something like this:
   

   supporter_key	action_key
   12345	999
   24680	999
   36912	999
   ...	999

6. Save this file as a delimited text file.
7. Return to the importer. Browse for the file you've just saved and designate the delimiting character, just like normal. Only for this, use the "write-in table" supporter_action.
8. Submit, and on to step two.
9. In step two, you should have many new and exotic choices (the field matching drop down lists will be updated to correspond to the fields in the supporter_action table). You'll obviously want to match the supporter_key to supporter_key and action_key to action_key. That's really all that's needed, but you can use as many fields as you like – and if you're displaying signatures in a user-facing version on your actions, you'll probably want to include names and (where possible) comments at the very least. You can put those into the data file as well, of course. Be careful with comments, and fields like it, in case the comment block itself includes commas, line breaks or tabs that might confuse the importer.

Allowed State Codes and Names

Your import files can contain either the code or the name of the state; both will work. Also, the text is not case sensitive: "New York" and "nEw yOrK" will both correctly import as long as the spelling is correct.

Info: Allowed Country Codes and Names

List of Country Codes and Names Allowed in Salsa

NOTE: Your import file should contain the code ONLY and not the name of the country.

List of allowable Language_code entries

The three-letter code must be used; the full name will not work.