Perform an Import Dry Run
Safety First
You’ve cleaned your data in the CSV template and you’ve checked it in the NPSP data import object, so it’s almost ready to go to its final home in contact, account, and opportunity records.
Just a couple more steps remain to check the configuration and do a dry run.
You can never be too careful with the health of your data—and you don’t want to learn that lesson the hard way. In this unit, you learn about the remaining steps now to make sure your final import will go smoothly.
Check the Configuration
From the NPSP Data Imports page, on the To Be Imported view, click the Import All Data Import Records button in the upper right to go to the NPSP Data Import page.
Take a look at the right side of this page where it lists your import options.
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Batch Process Size, the number of records processed at a time until all records are processed, defaults to 50 and is usually fine. If you get strange errors on your import, you may want to reduce the batch process size to 10 or lower. This can fix a lot of problems.
- In Contact & Account Matching the Contact Matching Rules default to “Firstname,Lastname,Email.” That works in most situations and we recommend using that setting, but there are options for other combinations of Firstname, Lastname, Email, and Phone, as well as unique custom IDs for contacts and accounts.
- In Donation Matching you have options to match on several opportunity fields and then update open opportunities, create all new opportunities, or both, depending on the match.
Leave the default configuration for this project. Make sure:
- Batch Process Size is 50.
- Contact Matching Rule is Firstname,Lastname,Email.
- Donation Matching Behavior is Do Not Match - No matching is attempted; new records are created.
Perform a Dry Run
Fortunately, NPSP Data Importer allows you to check your data with an import dry run, which also checks for potential duplicate records.
On the NPSP Data Import page, click the Begin Dry Run button.
When the dry run begins, you’ll see a status page that lets you know the current status of the dry run, the elapsed time, and alerts you to errors. This should just take a few seconds for your import.
Whoa. Hold up. It looks like you have an error! Don’t worry, it’s there intentionally—we’ll take the blame for this one. You’ll see the error now as long as you didn’t work ahead and fix it when you reviewed the CSV in step 2. Now that you know that you have something to fix, you can click Close on the status page.
NPSP Data Importer catches some types of errors—like invalid picklist values or missing values in required fields—but it doesn’t catch all formatting errors. For example, if a zip code begins with a “0” and your spreadsheet editor formatted that value as a number without the first digit displayed, NPSP Data Importer will treat it as a 4-digit number and import it.
Fix The Error
Back on NPSP Data Imports, click into the list views and select Dry Run - Errors. This list view is set up to help you sort out problems with records before the final import. Fix the error now.
- In this example, there should be only one record with an error. It’s for Amer Shakil and the error is “Invalid Donation Donor.” Click into the record.
- Scroll down to the Donation Information section.
- The error message told us that the error was on the Donation Donor field, and you see here that Amer Shakil is listed, but the only acceptable values for the importer are Contact1 or Account1. Click the edit icon (
) next to the field.
- Select Contact1.
- Scroll down and click Save.
The error is fixed and you’re ready for the final import. But first, check out the matching logic on this record.
Scroll up to the Contact1 Information section and look at the Contact1 Import Status field. It says “Dry Run - Matched None,” which means the import found that Contact1 on this record—Amer Shakil—wasn’t found in the system and a new record will be created.
The account of his primary affiliation, however, does already exist. Scroll down to the Account 1 information section and you’ll see that the Account1 Import Status is “Dry Run - Matched.” That means that it won’t be created, saving the problem of a duplicate record. (You can check the existing record by hovering over the account name in the Account1 Imported field.)
If you’re following along and completed all of these steps in a Playground, pick that playground from the dropdown menu below and click Verify. Next, it’s time to move on to your final import.
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