Hi Sandra,
I am trying to use the Data Admin module to upload new users but I am not too sure i am doing the right thing. This is a new install for new users and I am using “Full User Data” in the module. I have exported the data structure and populate the fields but I am getting a lot of errors and dry run aborted. (see image:
Is it a case where this only works for existing users and not a new install with new users? Or what am i doing wrong?
Hi willpro,
Looks like you’re doing it right. At first glance there’s a lot of errors, but luckily judging by the list there’s only 3 columns to change:
The first error “Invalid value F” is coming from the Status column (columns #11). Rather than the short-form F it’s expecting a whole word (from the options: Full, Expected, Left and Pending Approval). If you find-replace the "F"s in that column to the word “Full” it should be good to go. If every user is Full, then you can also select Custom Value from the column dropdown in step 2 and enter the word Full next to it.
The second error is for the Class Of column (#22). It’s looking for the name of the school year (2025 in this case) to already exist in the Manage School Years section of Gibbon. Setting up the future school years should resolve this error. You can also choose to skip that particular column (from the dropdown) when importing if it’s something you’ll setup later.
The third error is the Houses (#71), it’s looking for them to exist already in the Manage Houses section of Gibbon. The names of the houses in the column (Davidson, Sullivan, etc) should match one of the house names in the Manage Houses list. If you setup the relevant houses this column should import.
Once you adjust these three columns the import should go smoothly. Gibbon works with a lot of relational data between tables in the database, so what normally would be a dropdown in the “Add User” page gets translated to an ID through the importer, which is why it’s checking several other tables in Gibbon when importing into users. The “Full User Data” import is likely the biggest one to perform, so after tackling this it should all seem pretty easy.
Give a shout with any other questions.
Thanks for your speedy reply.
The only error I am getting now is the school year “class of”. I already have the future school years set up in Manage School Years 
but still getting the errors 
How do i enter that format in the structure?
The error is because the name entered in the import needs to match the school year name, so based on your screenshots “2019” in the Class Of column would need to be changed to “2019-2020” to match with one of the existing School Year names. Once this is changed the import should work 
work it did. Very cool. Great little tool.
Thanks much
No prob. If you’re doing any more imports or updating existing data by re-importing you can use the snapshot tool to make a quick backup of the database before importing so you can rollback should anything goes wrong. It can save some headaches in the case where you don’t catch a mistake until after the live run
Sandra, I am only seeing one user imported out of 147
Hmm, check the username column, is it unique for each user (or perhaps left blank?) If so this would cause the importer to associate each import row with the same user in Gibbon, since username is a unique field. The StudentID field is also unique if it’s provided, otherwise set this column to Skip in the import. You can delete the one user and re-try, it’ll save your options from the last import (select From Last Import from the column order when re-importing).
Hi Sandra,
What would you suggest to put in the username column? If i use first name, there are more than one persons with the same first name.
Additionally, what goes into the area code field? I am trying to include the area code digits for the country and its saying invalid entry. Is it text or digits? I used 1876 and 1 876 and got errors
Generating usernames can be tricky, you could try first letter + surname, first two letters + surname (spreadsheet functions can help for generating these before import). If your students have school emails, the first part before the @ is generally unique per student. At our school we use the student ID as the username, it avoids any name collisions and we’re using Google login (from Third Party Settings) so students rarely need to login with the Gibbon username+password.
You can find the area code for your country by going into the Add/Edit user page in Manage Users and looking up the value from the area code dropdown. It’s the IDD country code without leading zeroes or + (eg: Canada is 1, Hong Kong is 852)
Hope this helps!
Hi,
Thanks for your reply.
Identifying the area code is not the problem. When i put the code into the column (see image) 
I am getting this error (see image)
I am not sure as to the format of typing in the code.
Also I am now getting 6 primary role errors in those columns which i didn’t have before (see image above)
I have populated the primary role column. see image
I am not seeing where the errors are. Awaiting your kind assistance.
The second error is easier to fix: looks like there’s some blank rows on the file (row 148-153), if you delete those should be good.
The phone code error may actually be on my part, I’ve checked the script and it’s over-zelaously filtering numeric results and taking the spaces out (my apologies, didn’t catch this because my test data doesn’t have spaces). Attached is an updated usersFull.yml file, unzip the attachment here and replace the usersFull.yml file in modules/Data Admin/imports with this one.
Then your original value of 1 876 was likely correct (checking against the database table):
Hopefully this sorts out the last of the errors for you the Full User Data import is the biggest and most complex. If all else fails you can do a Basic User import with the same file (to get the users in), then a full import after that and choose the UPDATE option to update existing data, it’ll use the usernames to cross-reference and update the appropriate users.
thanks very much. Worked like a charm. Very cool
Hi Sandra,
While the data import was successful, on observation i noticed the start and end date was imported incorrectly. There was no indicator in the cell comment box for the year format to use (see image) 
We have made our adjustment, but for future use it would be nice to indicate the format there as well.
But thanks for a great module.
Thanks for the feedback! I’ll make a note to clarify date format for the next version.
Just noticing that although I got no errors during the upload i am not seeing the emergency names for the students appearing although they are set in the xls file. the contact numbers do appear though. Where does those info appear in the system?
On the admin side they should show up in User Admin > Manage Users & click to Edit a user, the Emergency Contact section is near the bottom. On the end-user side they’re in Students > View Student Profile & click View Details, the link for the Emergency Contact section is in the right-hand column.
If for some reason they didn’t import you can do a re-import for just the contact info. Do a quick snapshot first, then go to the User Data: Contact Information import option. From there you can use the same file as before, select the UPDATE only option, and proceed with the import (also set the Phone 1 to Phone 4 fields to “Skip this Column” because the country code issue won’t have been fixed for that import type yet).
Hope this helps!
thanks