Transcript of Video
With Microsoft Dynamics CRM, you can type in data, or import it from a spreadsheet or another data source.
For example, you can use the Import Data Wizard to import a list of product prices, leads that you purchased, or contacts that you exported from another contact tracking system.
In this video, you’ll see how to prepare external data; import the data to CRM; and then verify the results of an import.
To see how the process works, let’s import a Microsoft Office Excel worksheet file of leads. First, you need to make sure the data can be recognized by the CRM Import Data Wizard.
Ask yourself, are all the records in the data file the same type? Yes. All records in the data file will be imported as lead records.
Does the file have a header row? Yes. The row at the top of the worksheet contains the headings for each column.
Do the header and data rows have the same number of fields? Yes.
Do the column headings in the worksheet match the attribute display name values in CRM? Columns intended to map to a drop-down list field also need to map to corresponding drop-down list values for the appropriate field in CRM.
The easiest way to find out is to open a lead record. Each column heading needs to match a display name for the data to be mapped automatically to the correct fields in CRM. As you can see, the first problem is that the worksheet combines the first and last names. In the record, the names are separated. You don’t have any middle names. So, add one column, label the columns First Name and Last Name, and separate the names.
Note that Last Name is a required field, so make sure every cell in that column is filled in.
Next, add a hyphen to Email. Data mapping can be thrown off by one wrong character.
Company needs to be changed to Company Name, which is another required field.
And change Comments to the required field Topic, and add data to any empty cells.
After you finish formatting your data in Excel, click the Microsoft Office button, point to Save As, and then click Other Formats. Click Save as type and select CSV (comma delimited). Click Save, and then click Yes to remove all Excel formatting.
A CSV file is a plain-text file, which means you can open it in a text editor, like Notepad.
As you can see, the file contains no special formatting. CSV stands for “comma-separated values” because commas are used to separate data fields, like first name, last name, and e-mail.
If a field contains a comma, like this Topic value, it is set off by double quotation marks.
Now let’s start the import process. On the Tools menu in Microsoft Dynamics CRM, click Import Data.
For the Data file name field, click Browse and open the CSV file on your computer. Then, click Next.
Verify that CRM uploaded the correct file and click Next.
You can choose to allow CRM to attempt to map your data automatically. If you’ve created a previous data map, you can choose to re-use the one you previously created. Click Next.
Validate that your import is being mapped to the correct record type. If you were importing multiple files, you could select the record type for each one. Be aware that you have the option to create a new entity if the value doesn’t map to a standard CRM entity.
Click Next.
On the Map Fields page, you can validate that all your fields are being mapped to the correct CRM fields. If a field doesn’t exist, you can create one, or if you decide not to import a certain field, you can choose to ignore it.
Click Next.
On the Review Mapping Summary page, you can review all your mapping from your source data files. If you decide that you need to modify your earlier settings, you can click Edit. Otherwise, click Next.
Before you start the import process, you can change the settings to allow or not allow duplicates, as well as the owner of records that don’t map to a specific owner. You can also save this data map for future use by specifying a name. Click “Submit” to being the import process.
You can check the results of an import in CRM. In the Navigation Pane, click Workplace, click Imports, and then double-click the import job.
Under Details, you can check the leads that were created. And you can see if there were any problems. As you saw earlier, something as minor as a missing comma could prevent a whole row of data from importing.
Once you understand the basics of importing data, you can easily make sure all of your customer information is readily available in Microsoft Dynamics CRM.
