VSys One: Volunteer Management Software

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IFI Module-Specific Notes

Addresses

Addresses are broken out by address type, and you can apply fields to the type of address that you’re importing, e.g. "Home". A few fields – phone and e-mail – can be entered without specifying an address type. With these, IFI will try to find the best address to update, and if it can’t find one, it will create a "Home" address. Phone number fields do not have to be formatted, and if a default phone format has been set up, IFI will use that.

The "Bad phone number" and "Bad e-mail address" fields are special. These are used to mark a phone number or e-mail address as bad, and they work across all address types. To mark a phone number or e-mail address as not bad, just import that value into an appropriate field and VSys will remove the "Bad" flag.

IFI always updates or creates addresses by type. It never deletes them, so there is no "Action" field.

When importing e-mail addresses,

Always create new addresses, don't update existing ones

Forces VSys to create a new address even if there are existing addresses of the correct type.

Assignments

When importing new records here, if IFI finds a job slot which corresponds to the data provided, it will put the person into that job slot, otherwise a non-slot assignment is created, one which contains only as much information as you enter. Note IFI will not let you create a job assignment which conflicts with any other assignments the person may already have in this project. If you’re deleting an assignment, only the start date/time and delegation need to be provided. If "Job" is provided, any "Job group" value provided is ignored. Instead VSys gets the job group from the job itself.

Default location

If no Location is set in an incoming record, use this Location instead.

Allow overlap with existing assignments

By default VSys will disallow the import of assignments which duplicate pre-existing ones; checking this box turns off that checking.

Attachments

When importing attachments, the field Attachment file name is the filename of the actual attachment to be imported; this field is required. (VSys doesn't import attachments, e.g. images, which are themselves directly present in the database: it only lets the database specify where the file is on disk.)

Availability

Action can hold "Append", "A", "Overwrite", "O", "Delete", or "D". These fields are not case-sensitive, and indicate what IFI should do for this person's availability. Specifying "Append" will add any given availability in the file to the person's existing availability. "Overwrite" deletes any existing availability and replaces it with the new records, but only does so if one or more new records are given in the import file. "Delete" imports any new records and deletes all of the person's existing availability regardless of whether new records are being added.

Awards

Default award status

The award Status to be assigned to newly-created awards if not specified in the incoming data.

Awards (1+ in a single field)

This special-purpose module lets you import multiple awards from a single field, e.g. a field that contains "100 hour, 500 hour, 3 year" can create three awards without requiring that you first break the field into multiple fields.

Default award status (multiple)

The award Status to be assigned to newly-created awards if not specified in the incoming data.

Certifications

Certifications include background check requests and results.

Action can hold "Create", "C", "Update", "U", "Update/create", "*", "Delete", or "D". These fields are not case-sensitive, and indicate what IFI should do for this type of certification. Specifying "Create" will always make a new certification with this data, unless the person is not allowed to have more than one of this type of certification, in which case it will fail. "Update" will only update an existing certification of this type, and it will fail if the person does not have one. "Update/create" will update an existing one if present, otherwise it will make a new one. "Delete" will delete an existing certification if present, and fail if the person does not have one. In the case of "Delete", if more than one is present, IFI will work with the one which matches the effective date specified, if provided, otherwise it will work with the first one it finds.

You can import multiple types of certifications, each with a different action, since each action is associated with a specific type of certification.

(status)

For each type of certification being imported, sets the rule: Always create a new record, Re-use if it exists, otherwise create a new one, or Re-use if it exists, otherwise ignore its fields.

Comments

Append comments to previous comments rather than creating new ones for each record

When importing comments, on the second and later rows for a single person, append the comment text to an existing comment. This is especially useful when the comments from the source system get exported one line per record, and all of what's coming in is really as single comment.

Regular expression exclusions

Advanced and unsupported; comments whose text matches any of these regular expressions will be ignored.

General

When importing a record which involves a location, you can specify the location using either its hierarchical value, e.g. "Troy.RPI.Union.Room 308" or by its friendly description, "RPI Union room 308" as designated in the location's Full description field.

Hours

Don't check for duplicate hours

Normally VSys will ensure that imported hours don't overlap existing hours for the same person; check this to allow duplicate/overlapping hours.

Allow blank/zero-duration hours

By default VSys requires that all hours records have a Duration > 0; checking this allows hours records with a Duration of 0.

Interviews

Interviews are used for intake screening, evaluations, or even satisfaction surveys.

Action can hold "Create", "C", "Update", "U", "Update/create", "*", "Delete", or "D". These fields are not case-sensitive, and indicate what IFI should do for this type of interview. Specifying "Create" will always make a new interview with this data. "Update" will only update an existing interview of this type for the selected interviewee. If more than one of that type of interview exists, VSys will attempt to match on the interview date. "Update/create" will update an existing one if present, otherwise it will make a new one. "Delete" will delete an existing interview if present, and fail if the person does not have one. In the case of "Delete", if more than one is present, IFI will work with the one which matches the type specified. If more than one of that type exists, it will attempt to match on date as well.

Job associations

Default job association status

Any status here will be applied if an incoming job association has no Status assigned to it.

Lists

Action 1, Action 2, etc. can hold "Add", "A", "Delete", or "D". These fields are not case-sensitive, and indicate what IFI should do to the current person for this list. For each list, if an action is not specified, it is assumed to be "add". Note that you obviously cannot add or remove people in Intellilists from here.

People

Action can hold "Create", "C", "Update", "U", "Delete", or "D". These fields are not case-sensitive, and indicate what IFI should do for this person. Specifying "Create" will always make a new person with this data, unless the person already exists, in which case it will fail. "Update" will only update an existing person, and fail if the person does not exist. "Delete" will delete an existing person if present, and fail if the person does not exist.

Default person status, Default group, Default person type

If a person is being created, these values will be assigned to their relevant fields if no value for that field is imported from the source file.

Person creation import reference offset

When data is being imported from multiple databases, e.g. two or more Volgistics systems, the imported ID value for a person such as Kiosk ID would often be duplicated, with people in both systems sharing the same value.

To work around that, put an import reference offset here, e.g. "SOUTH". When creating a new person and the Import reference ID value is "1234", VSys will instead assign the import reference "SOUTH1234".

"Delete" is very dangerous in IFI! It deletes the person and all of his information, including certifications, custom fields, letters, volunteer hours, and others with no further prompting.

Person images

Images are imported from disk files, not directly from the import file itself. For example, include the value "c:\import\volunteer ABC.jpg" in the Filename column and VSys will import that as the photo for the current person.

Project people

Action can hold "Add", "A", "Edit", "E", "Edit/add", "*", "Delete", or "D". These fields are not case-sensitive, and indicate what IFI should do for this person. Specifying "Add" will always add this person, unless the person already exists or cannot be registered, in which case it will fail. "Edit" will only update an existing person, and fail if the person is not registered. "Edit/add" will edit the person if registered, or add if not. "Delete" will delete an existing person from the project, and fail if the person does not exist. "Delete" does not delete the person, just his registration from this project.

When editing an existing person, you can change the person’s role and/or delegation. Use the "New role" and/or "New delegation" fields for this. When adding or deleting a person, these fields are ignored.

Slots

Creates new job slots (cannot be used for editing existing job slots).

Default location

If no Location is set in an incoming record, use this Location instead.

Training

Imports training records for people. Note that if no Status is imported, the training record's status will default to "Complete".

Do not require matching training to a course

Normally VSys requires that an incoming record match a pre-existing training course; check this to allow training records to be imported that don't link to a course.

When matching to a course, require match on start time

When matching a training record to a course, VSys normally only looks at the date on the training; check this to require that the date and time match.

Automatically create courses as needed

If checked, and VSys can't find a training course for an incoming record, VSys will make the corresponding course.

See Also

Importing Data - Interactive File Importer

IFI Tasks

Using IFI

IFI Tools

Notes On Fields and How They're Interpreted

IFI Person Lookup