What if an email address has no Phone Import ID?

Lesli Cashin

I'm attempting to import email addresses that have unsubscribed to our emails.  I know I need the PhoneImportID for each record, but when I exported this field, most of them were blank.  I thought every phone type had to have an import ID?

John Heizer

What method did you use to get the exported file?  The Export module only has the System Record ID, but if you use Admin -> Import -> Constituent -> Constituent Phone to "Create import file" then you can get the Phone Import ID field.

Alan French

The export module should have the import ID available, at least it does in the UK version of RE.


It's possible to export the phone fields multiple times using different parameters, so I'm wondering if you might have accidentally exported all types of email addresses but only exported the IDs for particular types? That could result in a file that looks like what you've described, and the import IDs that are present in the file may not actually relate to the email address they appear next to.

Aaron Rothberg

Hi Lesli-


Every phone number in the database must have an Import Id. That Id is the unique identifier needed for all Update Imports. If you build a Constituent Export, you'll find the Phone Import Id under the phones section, just above the Inactive? field. Phone Import Id isn't available in query so you'll have to use Export.



 

Spring Velazquez

Aaron - it sounds like she's trying to import to RE from an external system that is where they would unsubscribe. Although I'm not sure where she's exporting the data file from...


If it's Constant Contact, she might be in the same boat I am right now. Our organization implemented CC while I was out on leave and not set up in the best way possible. Unless you create a custom field in CC there is no record ID for the constituents. No. Record. Id. 


The the ONLY data from CC that I now have (in about 18 unsub and optout reports/csv forwarded to me) is email address and (if I'm lucky) first name and last name. Add to that the staff members who started to manually code some of the emails as opt-out but don't remember which ones. Oh and the list initially imported to CC was actually a combination of RE constituents and LO constituents, and I've got over 3,000 opt-out/bad email addresses that I have to compare to about 30,000+ RE email address and see who came from RE so I can then code the rest in LO. And not one of the 3 files has an ID field that is the same as another.

Aaron Rothberg:

Hi Lesli-


Every phone number in the database must have an Import Id. That Id is the unique identifier needed for all Update Imports. If you build a Constituent Export, you'll find the Phone Import Id under the phones section, just above the Inactive? field. Phone Import Id isn't available in query so you'll have to use Export.