Loading
Salesforce now sends email only from verified domains. Read More
Email in Marketing Cloud Engagement
Table of Contents
Filter by (0)Add
Select Filters

          No results
          No results
          Here are some search tips

          Check the spelling of your keywords.
          Use more general search terms.
          Select fewer filters to broaden your search.

            Search all of Salesforce Help
            Search all of Salesforce Help
            Import Activity in Email Studio

            You are here:

            1. Salesforce Help
            2. Docs
            3. Engagement: Email Studio

            Import Activity in Email Studio

            Each import activity uses information from an outside file to update a subscriber list or data extension.

            If your account is integrated with a Salesforce account, use an import activity to create and populate a data extension with the data from a Salesforce object or report.

            Considerations

            • When you import to a list using the import activity, the system uses List Detective to prevent bad email addresses from being imported.
            • If the file you import is encrypted or compressed, create a file transfer activity to prepare the file for import.
            • When defining an import activity, provide information the activity uses each time it runs. The information gives the specifics of the file to import and guides the import activity's behavior while running the import.
            • Depending on account configuration, select whether multiple records with the same primary key can appear in an import file. Or retain only the last instance of the record to be saved.
            • Specify character encoding to use with imports. Your Marketing Cloud Engagement admin can enable this specification.
            • If importing to a data extension without a primary key, only the overwrite update type option is supported.
            • The default file source location is your FTP account's import folder.
            • If your account uses Automation Studio, you can import data into a publication list. Subscriber attributes aren’t supported for publication list imports.
            • When saving an import definition that imports a Salesforce object or report, the data extension is created automatically according to the object or report schema. After the data extension is created, you can’t change the data source.
            • By default, the import activity skips any rows with bad data and imports the rest of the file.
            • Importing data using the Overwrite or Add Only update options is typically fastest.
            • Using the Add and Update updated option when there are primary key constraints sometimes cause processing to take longer.

            Supported Date Formats

            Check out Supported Date Formats for Import in Marketing Cloud Engagement for a list of Date formats supported when uploading a date format into a date-type field. When importing dates into lists or a data extension, ensure that the date format in the file matches the date format your ImportDefinition uses.

            Create an Import Activity

            Import a file using an import activity in Email Studio. If the file that you want to import is encrypted or compressed, create a corresponding file transfer activity. You can import to an existing subscriber list or data extension.

            1. Click Interactions.
            2. Click Import.
            3. Click Create.
            4. Enter the Properties information.
              The name and description identify the activity in the application. Subscribers can’t see the name or description. The key uniquely identifies the activity when using the API.
            5. In the Source section, select the file location and complete the file naming patter. If you select Salesforce Objects & Reports, complete these steps.
              1. For Salesforce Data Source Type, select either Object or Report and choose the object or report to use.
              2. Choose whether to import all data or only data modified after the date entered.
              3. Select the type of file for your import.
              4. Choose whether to import the information into a subscriber list or a data extension. You can opt to skip rows with bad data or interpret double quotes as a text delimiter.

              By default, the import activity skips rows with bad data and imports the rest of the file.

            6. Select your update type.
              The Add and update option creates a record for each new primary key value and updates the existing primary key values with new information. The Add only option only creates records and ignores existing records. The Update only option updates existing records based on the primary key and ignores new records.
            7. Choose a data format that matches the region where you conduct the import.
            8. Select whether to skip the import if the last import occurred within a specified time span.
            9. Select whether to fail an import if the file is older than a specified time.
              The system examines the modified date of the file as reported by the FTP server in the File Transfer Location. If the difference in hours between the modified date and current system time is greater than the specified hours, the import doesn’t occur. You can specify a system buffer to help determine this value. The specified value of hours is added to the previously specified hour limit.
            10. Identify the destination for each column in the import file. You can specify column headings or ordinal, or you can map each value manually using a sample file.

              When importing dates into lists or a data extension, the date format in the file must be the same as indicated on the import definition. If the formats are different, validation fails.

            11. Enter the Import Completion Settings information.
              The Delivery Location field determines where to deliver the file with the completion information and exceptions, if applicable. Has Column Header indicates whether the system interprets the first row of the import file as a header row or as a data row. To receive the notification when the import is complete, enter an email address in the Send notification email field.
            12. Save the activity.

            View Imported File History

            See a history of files imported or attempted by the import activity in Email Studio.

            1. Click Interactions.
            2. Click Import.
            3. Select an import.
            4. Click File History.
              This information shows for each instance:
              • Start date
              • File name
              • Status
              • Description

            File-Naming Patterns

            Review these examples to understand how file-naming patterns are created in Email Studio.

            File-Naming Pattern System Looks For Example
            subscribers.csv A file named subscribers.csv subscribers.csv
            subscribers%%Month%%.csv A file name with the last two characters as a two-digit month subscriber12.csv
            subscribers%%Year%%%%Month%%%%Day%%.csv A file name with the format four-digit year, two-digit month, and two-digit day subscriber20101206.csv

            Personalization Strings

            Note
            Note

            Personalization strings are case-sensitive.

            To prevent activity errors, use the minute and second personalization strings only if they’re required to distinguish among files generated by different automation runs. For more information, see Import and File Transfer Activities Fail with “File Not Found”.

            The personalization strings available for naming files are:

            %%Year%%

            %%Month%%

            %%Day%%

            %%Hour%%

            %%Minute%%

            %%Second%%

             
            Loading
            Salesforce Help | Article