Importing Contacts

This topic provides additional details related to importing contacts from a customer information system into Digital Asset Management / Digital Asset Cloud Service.

Contact Import File Format

Contact import files use the following tab-separated values format:

Field Name

Optional/Required

Notes

External Reference Id

Optional

The contact's reference ID in the CIS application

Change Date Time

Optional

The date and time on which the contact was changed.

Applicable only for Incremental Uploads

Will be used to sequence processing in case there are multiple changes to the same contact.

Initial Load Sync Flag

Required

A value that indicates the type of upload. Valid values are:

  • F1IL - Initial Load

  • F1IC - Incremental

External Id

Required

The contact's ID in the CIS application.

When importing data from Customer to Meter or Customer Cloud Service this is the Contact External ID.

Contact Type

Required

The type of contact. When importing data from Customer to Meter or Customer Cloud Service this will be either Person or Business.

If the provided contact type has not been defined as a Program Subscription Contact Type in Digital Asset Management / Digital Asset Cloud Service an extendable lookup is used to map this value to the Contact Type used in Digital Asset Management / Digital Asset Cloud Service.

Name

Required

The contact's name. For format for this is <FIRST_​NAME> <LAST_​NAME> (note the space between them.

Home Phone

Optional

A home phone number associated with person-type contacts.

Mobile Phone

Optional

A mobile phone number associated with person-type contacts.

Phone

Optional

A phone number associated with business-type contacts.

Email

Optional

An email address for the contact.

Life Support Sensitive Load

Required

A flag that indicates if the contact requires a Life Support Sensitive Load. Valid values are "true" and "false"

An extendable lookup is used to map this value to the Life Support Sensitive Load flag used in Digital Asset Management / Digital Asset Cloud Service

Life Support Sensitive Load Description

Optional

An optional description for Life Support Sensitive Load. 

Is Erased

Optional

A flag that indicates if the contact has been obfuscated (if supported) in the CIS application. Valid values are Y/N (Default)

Applicable only to Incremental Uploads

This should be set to "N" if Object Erasure is not supported in the CIS application.

Sample Record

Below is a sample file:

EXTREFCON11    2023-06-21T13:15:00-08:00    F1IC    EXTCONTACT1    P    John Smith    (510)777-8888    (510)777-9090    (510)556-4556    johnsmith@gmail.com    false    None    N

Upload Batch Process

Contact import files are uploaded using the Contact File Upload (X1-COUPL) batch process. Use the Batch Control portal to view the parameters used by this batch process. This process should be run as needed for the initial import, as well as subsequent incremental updates.

This process creates inbound sync requests in the "Pending" state (see below).

The Contact File Upload - DACS (X1CONTUPLD) algorithm used by this batch process uses the following extendable lookups to map data in the import file to values defined in Digital Asset Management / Digital Asset Cloud Service:

  • CCB Contact Type Mapping (D1-CCBContactTypeLookup)

  • CCB Life Support Sensitive Load Mapping (D1-CCBLifeSupSensitiveLdLookup)

Values must be defined for these extendable lookups before import files can be uploaded into Digital Asset Management / Digital Asset Cloud Service.

Inbound Sync Request Business Object

Contact inbound sync requests are based on the Contact Initial Sync Request (X1-DASyncReqContact) business object.

Inbound sync requests are created in the "Pending" state. The Sync Request Monitor (F1-SYNRQ) batch process is used to transition these to the "Transform/Validate" state where the data is validated and transformed as needed for import. What happens next is based on the type of sync request:

  • Initial Load sync requests then move to the "Validated" state (or "Validation Error" if an error is encountered). These are processed by an "Initial Sync Request Load" batch process (see below) .

  • Incremental sync requests move to the "Add/Update" state in which algorithms add or update records as appropriate and then to the "Synchronized" state.

  • The Create Acknowledgement (X1-CRESRACK) algorithm on the "Synchronized" state can be configured to send an acknowledgement to the system from which the imported data originated. This requires specifying the "Send Sync Request Acknowledgement" (X1-SYNREQACK) outbound message type for the Outbound Message Type parameter on the algorithm.

Initial Sync Request Load Batch Process

Contacts imported as part of an Initial Load upload are created from Initial Load inbound sync requests using the Initial Sync Request - Load Contacts (X1-SILCO) batch process. Use the Batch Control portal to view the parameters used by this batch process. This process should be run as needed for the initial import, as well as subsequent incremental updates.

This process transitions the inbound sync requests to the "Loaded" state.