Create or update multiple records, or sync data from existing HR, payroll & POS systems using CSV templates for file imports
Core HR > Account data > Import data
To start a new file import, go to Core HR > Account data > Import data and click ‘Create new’. From the Type dropdown list select the data type.
Once the data type has been selected, the purple bar under the file selection will update to include a ‘Click here’ link to download a CSV template for importing the type of data selected.
Import types available
| Import | Description |
| locations | Add multiple locations at once, including address, time zone, grouping and even trading hours |
| location groups | If you use location groupings, bulk update with this import |
| roles | Upload multiple roles for any number of locations at once |
| employees | If not creating employees via workflows, use the import data process to add and update employee records |
| employee ratings | Upload star ratings for each role that employees work to help decide who best to schedule |
| New Hire | Pull your potential candidates in from your recruitment system and set off their onboarding in bulk |
| Qualifications | For keeping all your employee’s qualifications up to date so you know they’re ready to work certain roles |
| Managers | Create and update manager accounts or details, and assign or vary permissions |
| Budgets | Upload or update budgets for multiple schedules |
| Custom data | Add data to objects or custom data fields for employees, roles , locations, earning rates, vacation types or shifts |
| Demand driver sync | Import data regarding your demand drivers to help you make informed decisions while |
| Vacation | Upload vacation requests managed outside of Ento for them to display on schedules |
| Vacation balances | Update vacation accrual balances for employees where vacation balances are managed outside of Ento |
| public holidays | Add public holidays that can affect either individual locations, or the entire company |
| Sales transactions | Import sales data to help with employee forecasting when building schedules |
| Shifts | Import shifts to add schedule data quickly, shifts can be unassigned or allocated to specific employees |
| Unavailability | Upload Unavailability in bulk to display on schedules and the Unavailability Calendar |
| Work schedules | Where employee work schedules vary significantly, this import can upload or update them all at once |
| Workflows | Kick off a number of workflows at once for existing employees, using a range of workflow templates |
Import tips
- From the Create page you can download CSV templates for each file import type by using the ‘Click here’ link in the purple bar, just below where a file is selected for import.
- All imports must contain a header row with the same number of columns specified in the import specifications, or the import will fail.
- Only fields marked as mandatory (as indicated with an asterisk in the field header) need to be included, all other fields are optional.
- Excel will drop leading zeroes in number formatted columns, so change to text fields before you start working with the data, particularly for ID (especially employee ID) fields, as these is difficult to change later.
- Excel will default the template files to the incorrect date format – make sure to format all date columns as YYYY-MM-DD and ensure changes are saved or the import will fail.
- If using a file import to update data, you can leave fields blank if you don’t want them to be updated – only enter data that should be updated.
- Ensure files to be imported are saved in Comma Separated (CSV) format.
- Not all imports support all three import modes.
- Once you have run a file import, you will be taken to a page that summarises the changes, displays any errors, and shows records that were skipped.
- A full history of your file imports can be found on the Core HR > Account data > Import data page.
- Placeholders may prevent a record from being created or updated, and may cause a deletion request to fail. Placeholders are additional characters surrounding some special characters like apostrophes, hypens, dashes, ampersands etc, and they are added so special characters are read as text instead of code, and may be inserted when text is exported from some systems. If a record or file fails look through text fields for unexpected characters, for example & appearing where & would be expected.
Import modes
There are three modes which can be turned on or off when running a file import.
‘Delete’ mode should be used with caution, and only if you know exactly what you are doing. If in doubt, please contact Support before you proceed. It is not always possible to recover data that is accidentally deleted.
| Mode | Description |
| Create | All records found in the file and not found in Ento will be created. Only un-tick if you do not want to add any records that are not already in Ento |
| Update | All records found in both the file and Ento will have their details updated based on the information in the file. Only un-tick if using Ento as the ‘source of truth’ |
| Delete | All records in Ento not found in the file will be deleted. Caution: this should remain un-ticked unless you are uploading a complete list of records |
Types of import fields
| Type | Example | Description |
| String | Amy | A short string (less than 100 characters) of text, numbers, spaces and symbols |
| Long string | Here are some notes on Amy, which may be a block of text. | A longer string (less than 1000 characters) of text, numbers, spaces and symbols |
| Y/N | yes | Holds a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ setting |
| Date | 2014-11-02 | A date in YYYY-MM-DD format |
| Time | 14:25 | A time in HH:MM format |
| Number | 20.546 | A number. Check the ‘length limit’ column within the file spec for how many digits can go before and after the decimal point |
| Reference | AR10001 | Generally references the ID of another record type. In some cases it can reference the name of an access level. For example: ‘Company’. |
| Reference list | RO10001,RO10002,RO10003 | A comma separated list of values. Usually IDs. |
Import results / Checking for errors
Once you have run an import, you will be taken to the results page, or to view results for past imports go to Core HR > Account data > Import data home page. This can be extremely helpful to double-check why a whole import didn’t work properly, as it will advise why, or why certain lines didn’t go through.
Field name
| Type | Description | |
| Errors | If there is an error with the file import as a whole, it won’t run. possible errors include: ERROR – Missing header column, ERROR – Row X missing mandatory field value, and ERROR – Row X has an invalid column count, Expecting X, got Y |
|
| Created | A list of the records that were created during the import | |
| Updated | A list of the records updated during the import and the fields that were updated | |
| Deleted | A list of the records that were deleted during the import | |
| Skipped | Records in Ento that were identical to the file will just be skipped, as they don’t need to be updated. | |
| Warnings | A list of warnings that were encountered while processing the files and the actions the system took as a result. Warnings aren’t are serious as errors but should be reviewed and resolved in subsequent file import runs. |
