Import people into Converia

The Importer allows you to import a large number of personal data records with different roles (reviewers, participants or members) from external systems into Converia. This personal data is then available in the system for mailings, badge printing, check-in or for rating contributions, for example.

This chapter describes the general import of personal data.

Preparation of the import data in Excel

Fig. 1: Download the CSV template file

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 in Microsoft Excel. The two sample data sets can be removed.

Leave empty the columns for which there are no values (do not delete or reorder these columns).

The mandatory information for the data records to be imported is:

• 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 codes DE, EN or FR (only languages that are active for this conference can be used).

Person data records

Personal data sets can be imported with or without a Converia account.

Import person with 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.

Import person without account

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.

Change the encoding to UTF-8

To ensure that special characters and umlauts are imported correctly, it is necessary to change the encoding of the CSV template file to UTF-8 (without BOM). Unfortunately, this does not work in Excel, so we recommend the following approach:

1. The Excel file must not contain any “;” in the cells, check with the search function (Ctrl+F) and replace if necessary.

2. Save the Excel file as “CSV (separator-separated) (*.csv)”. Despite the warning “Some features in the workbook may be lost...”, use this format and close the file.

Fig. 2: Save table as CSV

1. Right-click the file and select “Open with” in a suitable editor (Notepad++, Notepad2, etc.)

Fig. 3: Open the table with a suitable editor

1. Convert the encoding to UTF-8 without BOM.

Fig. 4: Convert table to UTF-8 without BOM

5. Save & Close. After that, do not open or save the file in Excel, otherwise the coding will automatically be changed again.

If corrections need to be made to the data records, steps 1-5 must be repeated.

Importing data into Converia

• Show preview (no import will be carried out at this point).

• The following error messages may appear at this step:

  • Invalid email address. > Check the email address in the line indicated. The problem may be a space before or after the email address.

  • Invalid country code. This must correspond to the ISO code. > Check the country code in the line indicated.

  • An inactive language is to be imported. > Change the language in the given line.

  • Wrong number of columns, use the template. > Deleting, moving or adding columns causes this error message.

• Check whether all data records are displayed correctly. Particular attention should be paid to umlauts and special characters.

  

  Fig. 5: Preview of a data set

• If error messages appear or the display of umlauts and special characters is incorrect, the data records in the import template must be corrected and the conversion to UTF-8 repeated.

• All data records can be checked individually by clicking on Next data record example below (no import will take place yet).

Fig. 6: Start import

The Start import button only appears under the data records when there are no more error messages.

Fig. 7: Download report

Subsequently, a log is created of how the import went.

If personal data records already exist in the system before the import, it is recommended that you run a duplicate comparison after the import in case there are now duplicate personal records.