General field mapping

IMPORTANT NOTE: If you are exporting constituent data and re-importing it in order to bulk update it, make sure you include the LGL Constituent ID in your export. When re-importing, ensure that you set up a mapping for this field so that the bulk change you are making will occur in the correct constituent record.

In this article:

• Import field name
• Constituent number (#)
• LGL field mapping
• Record Type/#
• Rules
• Record Preview

This article takes a look at the mapping process in general and lays out some things to pay attention to.

Import field name

The name of each field from your file, determined by the values in row 1 of the file (AKA the header row in your import spreadsheet).

Constituent number (#)

Usually, constituent number will stay at #1, meaning that all data for each row will be imported for one constituent. (For instructions on importing relationships, see the "Mapping constituent relationship fields" article.)

LGL field mapping

There are a lot of fields to choose from (see the Data Dictionary for a complete list). Use this menu to set the field in LGL that will receive the data from this column, for each row in the file.

Set to -- Do not import -- in cases where you want the Flex Importer to ignore the data from that column.

Record Type/#

• Record Type/# allows you to group fields together
• In this case, Street and City are part of the same address, so Address #1 should be set for both
• Using record type/# is necessary only when you are importing multiple records per row (e.g., home address info and work address info for the same constituent, i.e., address #1 and address #2)

Rules

Rules provide a way to customize your import without changing your file.

• There are two common rule types:
  • Set Defaults: A great way to set default values for each record (Address Type or Gift Campaign, etc.)
  • Map Values: Good for category/menu-driven fields, allowing you to map incoming data to values in LGL
• Less common rule types:
  • Prepend value: Prepend value with a specific bit of text, often the name of the field itself
  • Append to existing value: For text fields, append the new data in this field to the existing value, if present

LGL's preferred date format is the native format of YYYY-MM-DD. 

Record Preview

The record preview shows you exactly how the Flex Importer has interpreted your mapping instructions. You can scroll through the first several records in your file to see a few different looks. Review the partially mapped and fully mapped examples below to see the difference in them, based on having added mapped gift fields.

Partially mapped

Fully mapped: Updated with gift fields