Import bookings into Converia
Management -> Attendee Registration -> Booking assistant
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Management -> Attendee Registration -> Booking assistant
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With the help of an import file, a large number of people including their bookings can be created in the Converia backend. This approach is recommended, for example, if you already have lists of bookings and/or people outside of Converia that you want to add as attendees in Converia. Use cases would be, for example, creating access for the Virtual Venue or booking many employees on a collective invoice (an empty collective invoice must be created in advance).
Even without importing, mass postings can be made in the backend by selecting existing records as the source for the personal data. In this case, you can proceed with the posting assistant after the predefined shopping carts have been created.
Bookable offers in Converia must also be created as a database for booking imports. This works as usual in the offer wizard. The offers are then compiled in a shopping cart. This predefined shopping cart is then booked in the import process. Several shopping carts can be defined for each booking import.
When bookings are imported to allow people access to the Virtual Venue, there are some important points to consider with regard to access restrictions for individual program items or roles in the Virtual Venue. In this case, please contact the Converia team in advance to discuss the options for the offer structure.
If personal data records already exist in Converia, you should make sure that these people are not imported again, as this would create duplicates in the system. Duplicates can be compared and merged in an account, but this is avoidable effort. Especially with regard to events in the Virtual Venue, duplicates should be avoided or the comparison must take place before the participants log in to the Virtual Venue for the first time.
The existing personal data sets in Converia must be compared with the persons in the import list. The existing persons in Converia can be viewed under Administration > Person Administration > Persons and exported as a csv file (Fig. 1). Before exporting, make sure that no filter is active. Afterwards, you can use the Excel function COUNTIF to compare persons and remove existing data sets from the import list.
The people who are removed from the import list can still be checked in later (in bulk) using the booking assistant. In this case, no csv import file is required, as the people are already entered in Converia. They can then be selected in the booking assistant as the source of the personal data Select existing people.
The import template can be downloaded from Management > Attendee Registration > Booking Assistant (Fig. 2).
To ensure that the importer can process the data correctly, it is necessary to follow the specifications of this import template exactly. The CSV template file can be opened and edited as usual with Microsoft Excel. The two sample data records can be removed.
Leave the columns empty for which no values are available (do not delete or reorder these columns).
Mandatory information for the records to be imported are:
Surname (Last Name column)
Country (Country column) – Use the ISO codes (ISO 3166-2 alpha-2 code list, second column in this Wikipedia list).
E-mail address (E-mail column) – If the e-mail address is invalid, the personal record will not be imported.
Language (column L Lang) – Use the language abbreviations DE, EN or FR (only languages that are active for this conference can be used).
If you are using more than one predefined shopping cart in an import, you must complete the Predefined Cart column. Enter the names of the predefined shopping carts there. If you are only using one shopping cart for the import, you can select it during the import process; it does not need to be entered in the Y column.
Personal data sets can be imported with or without a Converia account.
A data record can be imported with an account by entering a user name (column E User name). The data subjects should be informed that an account already exists for them. Otherwise, there is a risk that the persons will create another account, thereby creating duplicates.
A record can be imported without an account by leaving the E column empty. Affected persons should then be able to define their own password and username by clicking on an activation link that can be sent by email, thus activating the Converia account for the imported personal record. Without this activation via link, a duplicate will be created each time the person logs in at the frontend.
For data protection reasons, it is not recommended to import passwords for accounts at this point. For the same reasons, there is no password replacement function for Converia mailings, for example. However, you can send a link to people with an account, which they can use to request a new password. People without an account can set their password using the activation link.
Sometimes, just opening a CSV in Excel can cause discrepancies and thus potential errors when importing into Converia. To avoid this, we recommend the following approach for opening a CSV in Excel:
Open empty workbook
Data tab
Get data > From file > From Text/CSV
Select file
Import screen (check encoding and separators
Load
