Getting started with a new CRM can be intimidating. When all your contacts are in spreadsheets or in some other software, you can’t possibly add them one by one into your new CRM. You will want to import them into your new CRM. DistributedSource recognises this and helps you import contacts into DistributedSource from a CSV file using a simple tool.
You can export contacts from Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail, Microsoft Outlook and other sources in CSV format and import the same contacts into your Distributed Source account.Within minutes, you can upload thousands of contacts, giving you the jumpstart that you need to make your transition to DistributedSource smooth.
What’s even more awesome, is that you get to choose how each field gets imported. Yes, thats right! While most tools for contact import blindly dump data from one system to another, DistributedSource lets you import contacts in a way that will let you specify how each column in the CSV file should be stored in DistributedSource.
Import Contacts from a CSV file
1. Sign in to your Distributed Source account.
2. Once you are logged into your Distributed Source account, click “Contacts” on the navigation bar.
3. On the “Contacts” page, click “Import contacts”.
4. This will open a small overlay window, where you need to choose an option for importing contacts
5. Select the “CSV upload” checkbox and you should see a file upload window, where you need to select the CSV file from your computer and click “Open”.
Note : The first line of the CSV file should mention the field header names ( like name, phone, email etc., A sample CSV file is available here for your reference. ) This will upload the CSV file in your Distributed Source account and you will be asked to map “Import fields” of the contacts to the corresponding fields of Distributed Source CRM.
How To Map Fields?
Here is how it works. When you export contacts from a contact manager application, every attribute of a contact is stored under a column header. So if you have 30 contacts, the first name of all the contacts might be stored under “First_name” or “F_name”, this depends how the CSV File has been composed. Distributed Source has been designed to identify headers with common and obvious names. For example, if the First name of a contact is stored under the a header “Name”, our system will identify it and map it with the corresponding field of Distributed Source. However, on some rare occasions, the column headers in your CSV file may have uncommon names (e.g Fname, Ph.number). Distributed Source might not recognize such uncommon names, which would result in unmapped data. To ensure that all the data of a contact is mapped with the right Distributed Source fields, you can explicitly map an import field with the corresponding field of Distributed Source in this step. Here is an example:
Distributed Source supports the following input fields, so your csv backup may contain some or all of the following information about the contact:
- First name
- Last name
- Company name
- Mobile
- Home phone
- Office Phone
- Fax
- Personal Email
- Office Email
- URL
6. Once you have seen the preview of how the attributes of an imported contact is mapped with the CRM field of Distributed Source, click “Import” to import contacts into your Distributed Source account.
7. You will now see a message
8. Click “Ok” to continue to the next step.
9. It should take less than a minute for the import to finish. Check your email inbox for the “Import successful” confirmation.
10. When you receive the confirmation email, click the embedded link and you will be redirected to the “Contacts” page of your Distributed Source account.
11. All done, you should now see the contact database imported and stored in your Distributed Source account. Need Help? Having trouble importing contacts or need help with contact management? Write to us at support@distributedsource.com and we will be happy to help you out.