Uploading Event Campaign Volunteers

If you recruit volunteers to moderate your events, you can upload their information to an Event Campaign in your instance via Campaign Volunteer pages.

The UI for uploading campaign volunteers is similar to that used with import pages, but the resulting actions are processed differently. Campaign Volunteers are uploaded to Campaign Volunteers pages, and processed, validated, and recorded in the database as Campaign Volunteer actions. In contrast, uploading to an Import page results actions on a page with the type Import.

Internally, uploading an action to an Campaign Volunteer page is handled almost identically to a user taking action on the page. The same fields are required, campaign settings are pulled in from the page's campaign, page configuration still affects how the action is processed, etc.

User Tags, Custom Fields, Phones, and User data fields are handled the same in both Campaign Volunteer Actions and import actions.

File Requirements

All imports have some common requirements. Your file must:

  • Be formatted as a TSV or CSV;
  • Include a header row with the correct field name(s). If your file contains an unrecognized field name value in the header, you'll see a message and have a chance to correct it.
  • Include a column that identifies the user. The choices are email, user_id or akid. ActionKit will match data to existing users' based on this column.
  • Be saved in the UTF-8 encoding, if it includes accented characters or international names.

Other Required Fields

As with all pages, the fields required for action are determined by the page type and the configuration of the page.

The following field is always required to upload an event:

column value
email (or akid, user_id). user identifier

Other Fields

  • source: As with other actions, each Event Create Action will have a source. Include a source column in your file to override the default. Action pages, unlike import pages, do not have a configurable default source.
  • event_volunteer_is_approved: By default, the volunteers you upload will be awaiting approval. If you'd like to approve them as part of the upload, include any nonblank value in this field.
  • User information such as zip or postal code, phone number, and so forth.
  • Custom action fields.

Differences From Imports

When uploading campaign volunteers, subscriptions are not changed. Users will not be subscribed to the page's list.

Note

Subscribe any new users before uploading them as campaign volunteers. New users will not be subscribed when included as part of an campaign volunteer upload and will have a subscription status of never.

The created_at column used in imports is not supported for campaign volunteers. Uploaded Campaign Volunteer Actions can't be backdated.

The language from the Campaign Volunteer page is used to set the user's language. The lang column used with import pages is not supported.

Confirmations and Notifications

When uploading events, action confirmations and notifications are triggered as if the user had taken action on the page. If notifications or confirmations are enabled, then then they'll be triggered for each uploaded campaign volunteer.

To prevent sending of confirmation emails, either disable the page's Confirmation Email, or include a skip_confirmation column with a value of 1 for each row to skip.

Uploading Campaign Volunteers: How-to

After your Campaign Volunteer page has been created and configured, the upload process will look like this:

Create Your File

1 Create a file that satisfies the requirements for the upload. Remember the fields required for action are determined by the page used for the upload.

2 Navigate to your campaign's dashboard, and click "Upload Signups" for the page you wish to use.

Upload Your File

1 Select the checkbox to confirm that these users have not been purchased or borrowed. You cannot email purchased or borrowed emails through ActionKit. This is important for maintaining a good reputation with ISPs and therefore good deliverability.

2 Before uploading, check the upload summary to verify that the actions will be processed as intended. If an Edit link is present then the value can be changed by configuring the page. The summary also lists the minimum required fields for your file; you might confirm that your file has a value for all required fields.

3 Uncheck the Auto-create user fields if you don't want ActionKit to create new custom user fields for any column with a header beginning user_. If you want to add values to an existing user field, uncheck this box to see a warning and have a chance to correct any misnamed user fields.

4 Click Browse to locate your import file then Start Upload. ActionKit displays your progress during the import.

Note

Uploads can take a while! Before doing a large import, try importing a few rows to make sure the format is correct. You can also compress your file using gzip or zip to reduce upload time.

5 Check for errors or warnings.

  • First, ActionKit will check your file format (csv or tsv only, no excel files) and your column headers. You'll be able to correct your headers on the screen directly instead of having to open and edit your file.

  • While your upload is running, you'll see a link next to upload status to stop your import.

  • When your import is done, you'll see a summary of your upload including the number of rows successfully imported, the number of rows that failed and the number that generated a warning.

  • Below the summary, are the details about problem rows. Click on details to see the problem value and the original data from your file.

    Warnings: Warnings tell you that we imported your row but something may be wrong with it. For example, a new US user with zip of "xyzzy" in the file will be created with a blank zip.

    If a row can't be parsed as UTF-8 it's interpreted as Latin-1, which often results in incorrect interpretation of special characters. You can re-import with corrected values or correct the values manually from the individual user record.

    Errors: Rows with errors are not imported. If some rows fail, you can download a csv of the failed rows, making it easier to correct and re-upload only the failed rows.