Importing/Exporting Users

Formatting the Data

The import allows you the opportunity to do a mass import of users. While Exporting provides a way for you to share your User information with other applications which can read the data. The User import file is a CSV file formatted in a way that Fishbowl knows what to do with the data. If you don't have a file that was exported from Fishbowl, this can be easiest to do using a spreadsheet program.

Passwords cannot be updated through this import and are not exported. If a new user is created it will be assigned a default password of "password". The "admin" account details cannot be updated.

All fields will be one of two types:

Text - A textual value. May contain any character, but if it contains a line break, comma or double quote, it must be wrapped with double quotes on both ends. If a field is wrapped, all text must be inside the double quotes. Double quotes in the text value must be doubled to import properly
Numeric - A decimal number greater than or equal to zero with up to four digits after the decimal point. The number must not have thousands' separators in it - 1234.56 is a valid number, while 1,234.56 is not.

CSV fields used in the User import/export file

Column Name	Type	Description
UserName	Text (30 chars)	The username of the User. *Required* This is the key field used and cannot be updated/changed.
FirstName	Text (15 chars)	The first name of the User.
LastName	Text (15 chars)	The last name of the User.
Initials	Text (5 chars)	The initials of the User.
Active	Text	Specifies if the User is active. It must be one of the following: true false *Required*
UserGroups	Text	A string separated with the pipe character ("\|") listing the User Groups the User is a part of. There must be no spaces between delimeters and the text.
DefaultLocGroup	Text	A string specifying the default Location Group. This string must also appear in the LocGroups string below. *Required*
LocGroups	Text	A string separated with the pipe character ("\|") listing the Location Groups the User is a part of. There must be no spaces between delimeters and the text. *Required*
Email	Text (255 chars)	The email address of the User.
Phone	Text (255 chars)	The phone number of the User.
CF-	Text (30 chars)	The user's custom field value. The name of this column is CF- followed by the name of the custom field. There is one custom field column for each of the user's custom fields.

Creating a CSV file

In order to import your data, you must first export it to a comma separated values (CSV) text file. All major spreadsheet programs can export data in this format. If you do not know how to export your data to a CSV file, please refer to the documentation of your spreadsheet program.

When exporting to CSV format, make sure to verify the following:

The data is formatted properly (see the first section)
The file must contain column names in the first row, using the column names in the table above.
Commas are used to separate fields
Text values are surrounded by double quotes