VIP Upload profile data from other systems

To upload profile information about frontline organisations, sectors or external agencies, you need to export the data as a spreadsheet from your existing system. You will then need to make sure it will be recognised by VIP Online. To do this: 1. Save the file as a csv (comma separated variables) file 2. Make sure the first row are headers (e.g. 'name', 'postcode' etc) a. You need to make sure that these headers will be recognised by VIP Online. VIP Online will not be able to import data it doesn't recognise. It uses the column headers to work out where data should go. However, it doesn't matter what order the columns are in b. If your existing system has an automatically generated ID for each organisation, you can include this in your upload. If you do this, VIP Online will remember the ID, and if in the future you upload an updated spreadsheet with the same organisations (with the same IDs), VIP Online will update profiles, rather than creating new ones c. For fields that have drop-downs, (e.g. 'who do you work with'), the values in the spreadsheet need to match exactly the text in the drop-downs d. You can upload as much or as little data as you like: at a minimum, a name. When you log in to VIP Online as an administrator, go to system admin and then system administration. Click on upload profile data into your system in the file transfer' section.

You will then see the screen below. You need to select a type of profile in the first section. You should then tell VIP Online the source of your data (e.g. Access, VC Connect etc). If your data source does not appear in the drop-down box, you'll need to type it in the text box (in the future, what you've typed in will appear in the drop-down box). The reason for doing this is that you may have several sources of data (i.e. different systems) that will have different IDs. VIP Online needs to know the source of the IDs so that it can use the correct IDs from the correct source to update profile information.

Finally, click on the 'browse' button, select the csv file you've prepared, and click 'Open'. Then click 'upload file'.

If the upload was successful, you will see the screen below. If it wasn't, then your file was too big (over 1MB) or not a csv file. If you get the error message 'File could not be parsed properly', please check the appendix at the end of this document. VIP Online looks at the headers in the spreadsheet, and the first few rows, and attempts to match them up to the fields in VIP Online, and shows you the results. Please check that the matching has worked OK.

If there were any problems matching the data, the fields will be listed below the table. You may need to go back and alter your spreadsheet to match up the fields. If you don't want to import the data, you can just carry on. If you are happy to continue with the upload, you need to decide whether you want VIP Online to check and

clean your data as it's inserted. If you do, it's likely that you'll get a list of errors after the data are inserted, where values in your spreadsheet were incorrect (e.g. invalid email addresses). For your first upload please do not select the final three options on this screen. Whether you want your data validated is up to you: it may be a helpful way to clean up some of your data, but it's likely that you'll have to do some work on the data in your spreadsheet before you get a successful upload. When you click the 'confirm' button, VIP Online will add the data from your spreadsheet into the system. This may take some time, depending on the size of your spreadsheet. When it is complete, you will see the screen below.

If there were any errors, these will also be listed. Review these, and if you want to tidy up the data in your spreadsheet and re-upload, tick the 'Tick this checkbox to confirm you wish to undo this upload' and click 'undo'. This will delete all the data that have just been inserted into VIP Online. To ensure data integrity, this is the only opportunity you have to undo the upload. If you are unsure, and want to have a look at the profiles that have been inserted, right-click on 'home' on the main menu, and select 'open link in new window'. A new window will open on the home page of VIP Online: you can now navigate to organisations and sectors > frontline organisation > view to see a list of organisations, including those you've just uploaded. You can view their profiles in the usual way. If you are unhappy with the upload, return to the original window and undo the upload. Otherwise, you can now carry on using VIP Online.

Appendix: File could not be parsed properly This error occurs when VIP Online cannot recognise that the file you've uploaded is a csv file. Files have additional information attached to them, including what type of file it is this is separate to the filename. This means it is not enough for a file to be called (for example) mydatatoupload.csv it actually needs to be a csv file, and be labelled as such. Depending on your software and the way your system is set up, the csv file you've created may not be labelled in such a way that VIP Online can recognise it the incorrect labels are added to the file. For security reasons we do not allow any kind of file to be uploaded, so you will need to carry out a couple of extra steps to get the upload to work. These instructions apply to Windows: a similar approach will work on other platforms. 1. Open up Notepad on your computer (perhaps Start > Programs or possible Start > Programs > Accessories) 2. Go to File > Open on the menu, and open the file you've prepared for upload to VIP Online. It should look something like this: "id","name","address1","web","primary purpose" "123","Argyle Homeless Shelter","123 Long Lane","www.lamplightdb.co.uk","Any/all" "A456","Runway Employment Project","456 Test Road",,"Community centre" 3. If it doesn't look a bit like this example, (and particularly if there's lots of squiggly characters), it's not a csv file at all. You need to go back to your spreadsheet package and make sure you 'Save as' csv. 4. In Notepad, click 'Save as' and make sure that the 'Save as type' dropdown says 'Text documents'. Give the file a new name and save it. You should now be able to upload this new file to VIP Online.