Find the Bulk Importer in AskNicely
AskNicely now offers a CSV uploader for your custom groups, handled on your Data Management page. (Settings > General > Data Management > Custom Groups tab.)
In this article, we’ll walk through using a CSV to upload several groups at a time. If you are new to Custom Groups, or only have a small number of fields you want to create, we recommend you start with manually creating custom groups. We will have you download a sample "Template" to show you how to format your CSV. We recommend you copy your data to our sample to make things easy.
Find the Bulk Importer in AskNIcely
We’ll start from the Bulk Importer. To get there:
- Click the Cog Wheel to open your Settings.
- Click Data Management
- Choose Custom Groups
- Click Bulk Import
5. A window will open asking you to tell us the new Group Name (for our example, this will be “Supervisor”) and where to group the items from (in our case, Customer Success Manager). You must choose to group items from a data point that already exists in AskNicely.
6. Click Continue to proceed.
Note: It’s not unusual to get a pop-up telling you that if you leave, changes might not be saved. You can safely click Leave to progress. Don’t worry, we won’t actually delete anything.
The Wizard
After you’ve entered the group name and where the items will come from, you’ll find yourself in the import wizard. This will take you step-by-step through the process.
Adding in the CSV
- Click Download CSV Template. The template will have the column headers formatted for you using formatting that will be most easily read by the importer.
- Manually add or copy and paste your data into this CSV file and save it.
For our example, under our new data point titled “Supervisor,” we have Rufus Wainwright and Matthew Berninger. Each supervisor supervises a group of CSMs:
- Rufus supervises Arya Stark, Jon Snow, and Tyrion Lannister.
- Matthew will assigned Jamie Lannister and Ramsay Bolton. (Good luck, Matthew.)
Note: This process absolutely scales. You can do this with groups as small as one or as large as thousands.
- Upload the CSV to AskNicely by clicking Browse Files or dragging and dropping the file into the indicated square.
Finishing the Import
Once you’ve uploaded your CSV, AskNicely will ask you to confirm what data each column contains: the group name or the data to group under that name. You can change the selection from the dropdowns on the right (a).
- Once everything is matched, click Match.
- The next screen will look nearly identical, asking you to confirm the match. Click Confirm.
Once you confirm, you’ll be taken to the final step, where you’ll see a summary of:
- How many new groups were added
- How many existing groups were updated
- How many groups live under this group name now total
- The lines of new data we added
- Any lines of duplicate data that were ignored
- Total data present now under this group title
Lastly, you’ll be asked to confirm what to do with any groups that weren’t part of this import:
Keep all groups will leave any existing data, even if it wasn’t in this upload.
Remove groups not in this import will leave only the groups you just uploaded.
See below if you choose to keep all groups....
- Click Apply Changes.
- Click Done to complete the process and add these groups.
Applying the Changes
You’ll be taken back to the Custom Groups screen, where the groups you just imported will be shown. You can modify them by clicking on their names.
Click Apply Changes to apply these new groups to your contacts. This will run through all of your contacts, and apply the new data point where applicable. This process can take a little while, depending on your contacts.
In our example, AskNicely will look through the contacts and whenever Jamie Lannister is the Customer Success Manager, AskNicely will add the data point “Supervisor,” with Matthew Berninger as the value. This process can take a little while, depending on your contacts. You can verify this on your Contacts page when the process is complete.
Note: This process will apply the custom groups to your contact data immediately and going forward. It will not apply these data points retroactively to responses that you’ve already collected.
You can now use this data point just like any other data point. Use this to insert into text, to sort leaderboards, and more! If you come up with a creative use, let us know.
If you have any questions, please reach out to our awesome support team by clicking the chat button in the bottom right, or by emailing support@asknice.ly.