Administer > Database administration > Data persistence > Importing records > Import a character-delimited text file

Import a character-delimited text file

Applies to User Roles:

System Administrator

Before you import a character-delimited text file, you need to prepare your source file and add a character-delimited import descriptor record first.

To import a character-delimited text file, follow these steps:

  1. Prepare the source file. The following table describes the rules that external source files must observe.

    Rule Note
    Only plaint text files are supported. Be sure to not load binary files, such as .JPG and .XLS files.
    If the source data contains non-ASCII characters, the external text file must use UTF-8 or Unicode encoding.  

    Column headers in the external file are mandatory and must be unique.

    CSV files with duplicate column headers cannot be imported. The wizard displays a warning on the duplicate columns and is not able to proceed.

    Make sure your source file contains column headers on the first line, and remove or rename duplicate columns as needed.

    Column headers in source files should follow the JavaScript Identifier Naming conventions.

    Column headers in source files are used as JavaScript identifiers in this feature.
    If the number of values in a row does not match the number of the column headers, the row is skipped. For example, if your source file contains 6 column headers, a row with more or less than 6 values is skipped. Make sure your source file does not contain invalid rows.
    When a source file is huge (more than 15, 000 lines or 10 MB in size), it may take a long time to load the file. You are recommended to split a huge file to smaller ones before loading.
    Digit grouping is not supported and only numbers in raw format can be imported.

    For example, "1, 000.000, 3" cannot be correctly recognized.

    You must change it to "1000.0003".

    Unique keys are not automatically generated during the import operation. Make sure that the records to import match the data constraints that are defined in their dbdict.

    Delimiters in external CSV files can be one of the following:

    • a comma
    • a tab
    • a semicolon
    • a user-defined character other than listed above

    When a field value contains the delimiter character, enclose the value in double quotes.

    For example: "abc,def"

    The following date formats are supported for external source files:

    • mm/dd/yy [hh:ii:ss]
    • yy/mm/dd [hh:ii:ss]
    • dd/mm/yy [hh:ii:ss]

    Note [hh:ii:ss] is optional.

    Make sure all of your source data uses the correct date format. You will need to specify the date format later when adding an import descriptor for the source file.

    Note After importing, the imported data is converted to the login user's date format.

  2. Resolve necessary validations or dependencies first.

    Note Triggers are enabled during importing. For this reason, you may need to resolve some validations or dependencies first. For example, before loading a contact record, an operator record should be loaded first. Otherwise, a message, for example, “No operator record to sync”, pops up.

  3. Launch the Text Import Wizard, and add an import descriptor record for the text file. For details, see Add an import descriptor record.
  4. Click Test to test the importing of records.
  5. Review the test results on the Test Import tab.

    Note Only the first ten lines in the external file are tested.

  6. Click Proceed.
  7. Click Run.
    Service Manager imports the external file.

    • Scheduled import is not supported for character-delimited files.
    • Some joinfiles need to be loaded completely to achieve desired data import results. For example, when loading service catalog items, you need to load the service catalog display records concurrently. Otherwise, the imported records are not displayed correctly in the catalog.