Import your existing records

Most businesses arrive with their records in a spreadsheet: customers, jobs, appointments, products. You can bring them into your application in one go, check exactly what will happen before anything is written, and undo the import for 30 days afterwards.

Where an import happens

An import happens inside your application, on its own import screen, not in the Divvent portal. Your file is uploaded straight into your application's own storage. Its rows never come to Divvent, and Divvent's AI never sees them.

To get there, open your application in the portal and go to Settings, then the Import tab. Under Import a spreadsheet, press Open the application's import screen. The tab also says which of your application's roles can use the import screen, and which kinds of record rows can become.

The import screen is for your application's administrators: the roles that may read and change every kind of record. You sign in to your application as one of them.

If the tab says there is nothing to import into yet, your application has no first version. If it says the application is not in production yet, release a version first (see Release a version).

What you can import

On the import screen, under Import a file, you choose what The rows become and pick The file. You can upload:

• CSV, TSV or Excel workbooks (.xlsx). Every sheet of a workbook is read.
• A database file from another system: a SQLite database, or a MySQL or PostgreSQL dump. Each table is treated as a sheet, and nothing in the file is ever run.
• A JSON, NDJSON or XML export.

The screen shows the size limits for your application. Usually a CSV or TSV can be up to 500 MB and a workbook up to 20 MB, with up to 2,000,000 rows a sheet.

Leave The first row is headings ticked if your first row holds column names, then press Upload.

If your application is connected to a service it can import from, such as Airtable, Google Sheets, HubSpot, Xero, QuickBooks or Shopify, the import screen also shows Import from a connected service. An owner connects the service in the portal first (see Connect other services).

Say which column is which

After the upload you see Map the columns. Each column of your file is listed with what it holds (for example "Text · 1,201 filled · 3 blank · 1,198 distinct"), and you choose the field it feeds, or Do not import. Required fields are marked.

A few more choices appear where they are needed:

• Which record a row is, by: pick a column such as a customer reference, so that rows with the same value become one record. A row that repeats another exactly is treated as the same record. One that disagrees is refused and listed, never merged.
• Update a record already here: once you have picked that column, you can tick the box to update a record in your application that has the same reference, instead of adding another.
• Values in a column: where a column holds a short list of words, such as "Compl." and "Done", you match each one to one of the field's choices. A value you leave unmatched means that row is refused.
• How references go on after this import: if your file has its own reference numbers, such as INV-00412, you can choose to carry on in that format.
• Also import these rows as another kind of record: one sheet, or each sheet of a workbook, can feed several kinds of record at once. For example, a list of jobs can also create the customers they belong to.

Press Save the mapping when you are happy.

Ask Divvent to propose the mapping

Instead of choosing every column yourself, you can press Ask Divvent to propose a mapping. This takes you to the portal's Import tab with your file's shape: each column's heading and its counts, never a row or a cell.

1. Check the table under The file's shape. It is everything Divvent was given.
2. Press Propose a mapping into and the kind of record. Divvent's AI suggests a field for each column, how sure it is, and why. The doubtful columns are listed first, so read those carefully.
3. Anything that would stop the import, such as a required field with nothing feeding it, is shown at the top. Columns that will not be imported are listed as notes.
4. Press Take this mapping back to the application. The mapping is filled in on your import screen for you to check and save. Nothing is saved until you press Save the mapping there.

A proposal uses your account's AI budget (see Plans and billing).

Check the preview and approve

Once the mapping is saved, the Preview shows the first 50 rows exactly as they would land, and says how many would be new, how many would update a record already there, and how many would be refused, with the reason for each.

Nothing is written until you approve. Press Approve this import to say the mapping and the preview are right. If you change the mapping afterwards, the approval is taken back and you approve again.

Run it

Press Run the import. The screen shows how many rows have been decided so far, and counts of what was Imported, Updated and Refused. You can leave the page and come back. If a run stops part way, press Resume the import: it carries on where it stopped and never writes a row twice.

Each row is written with the permissions of the person running the import, so an import can never create a record you could not create by hand.

Fix the refused rows

Under Refused rows you see each refused row with its row number and the reason, such as a date that could not be read. Press Download the refused rows (CSV) to get them all in a file. Correct them in your spreadsheet and import that file on its own.

Undo an import

An import can be undone for 30 days. After a run, you can undo one batch at a time with its Undo rows button, or press Undo the whole import.

Undoing removes the records the import created and puts back the ones it updated as they were before. A record someone has changed since the import is kept and listed, and so is one that something else now refers to.

What Divvent never sees

• Your file and its rows stay in your application. Divvent's AI only ever sees column headings and counts, and only when you ask it to propose a mapping.
• The preview, the refused rows and the undo are all shown inside your application, not in the portal.

For more about this, see The AI and your data.