This article covers the importing of historical points before point calculations have been started for your Engage environment (including calculations via API, automations, or purchase/return activity). If point calculations are already active when you want to do a points import, you should follow this guide instead.
- Do not exceed 20,000 rows in your CSV file (or
pointtransaction nodes in your XML) - split into several files if needed
- Be sure to include all the mandatory fields listed on the table below
- If using a CSV make sure it’s UTF-8 encoded and with semicolon separated values
- As the
transactionType value, use only “purchase”, “return”, “adjustment” or “rewardvoucher”
- As the
keyType value, use only “memberNumber”, “externalId” or “contactId”
- Only set a value in one of the fields “expireAfterMonthsInactive“ and “validTo“
- If the point transaction is already expired, set date value of the expiration in the field “validTo“, DO NOT set “expireAfterMonthsInactive“
- Advice: If the settings for expiration are correctly set up AND the value of
validTo or expireAfterMonthsInactive matches that expiration setting, these fields can both be set to blank and values will be added based on what is set up in these expiration settings
Do not mix different keyType values in the same file as the importer takes the first one it finds and then uses that keyType for all the subsequent rows in the import file.
For a points import to work, contacts of type “Member” must have one of following keys: memberNumber, externalId or contactId. If the contact does not have any of these keys, the import will fail and give an error.
When importing a CSV, single and double quote — the characters ” and ’ — are so-called reserved characters and will be interpreted as the start and end of a string field. They can’t be used for anything else, or the import will fail. For example ” is sometimes used as the symbol for “inch” in product names. Having this in just one field in your CSV could break the import.
keyType in your import has one of the values “memberNumber” or “externalId”, then a new contact will be created.
If this happens when keyType has the value “contactId” then a new contact will not be created. Engage is not able to create a new contact from a specified contactId. So, in this case, the whole file will be skipped and not imported.
Any contact created in this way will be approved and their firstname and lastname will be “PointTransactionImport”.
Structure of the import file
This is what each row in your CSV or each pointtransaction node in your XML should contain.
| Name | Description |
|---|
| *key | The contact identification string (this can’t be empty). |
| *keyType | What key represents, which can be either “memberNumber”, “externalId”, or “contactId”. |
| *transactionType | This must be either “purchase”, “return”, “adjustment” or “rewardvoucher”. |
| *transactionDate | The timestamp of the points transaction. Replaces the older “createdOn”. Example: 2019-06-13T12:00:25+1:00 |
| *pointDefinitionId | A positive value in the PointDefinition database table. The default (and currently only) value is 1. A value that doesn’t exist in the PointDefinition table will cause a validation error. |
| *amount | The number of points added (positive) or removed (negative). |
| description | Optional string |
| validTo | Optional string |
| createdBy | Optional string |
| source | We recommend leaving the source blank. |
| expireAfterMonthsInactive | Optional integer |
The names in the column “Name” can start with a lower-case or upper-case letter.
The fields validto and expireAfterMonthsInactive cannot be added in the same row.
Example of values
| key | keyType | pointDefinitionId | transactionType | amount | transactionDate | description |
|---|
| 1567 | memberNumber | 1 | purchase | 100 | 2021-08-21T08:16:59+02:00 | Trousers |
| 1839 | memberNumber | 1 | purchase | 100 | 2022-10-17T20:36:26+02:00 | Hat |
| 1544 | memberNumber | 1 | return | -100 | 2021-12-23T14:05:25+01:00 | Gloves |
| 1356 | memberNumber | 1 | purchase | 100 | 2022-03-02T00:47:20+01:00 | Pauldrons |
| 1644 | memberNumber | 1 | rewardvoucher | -100 | 2021-05-21T11:17:54+02:00 | Converted to voucher |
| 1567 | memberNumber | 1 | rewardvoucher | -100 | 2021-11-24T01:04:38+01:00 | Converted to voucher |
| 2135 | memberNumber | 1 | purchase | 4210 | 2021-10-24T01:04:38+01:00 | Accumulated points |
key of 2135, all their points are imported as one entry, without history.
Currently, Engage supports only one point definition, with a value of 1. Support for using several point definitions will be added in the future.
Keep your CSV to 20,000 rows or fewer, and your XML to 20,000 pointtransaction nodes or fewer.
Importing the file
Your CSV or XML file / files must now be placed on your FTP inside a folder named Integration/PointTransactionImport
The actual processing of your files must be manually triggered by your Voyado Engage team.
The result of the integration, including the validation check, will be shown in the integration log as type Data migration.
File validation
Each file is validated before it is processed. If any error is found during the validation of a file, it will be logged in the integration log and the whole file will be skipped. This is a safety feature since unique IDs are not used for the rows inside the files. Validation will then continue with the next file.
The following validations are applied to all mandatory fields in your files:
- All returns must have a negative value
- All purchases must have a positive value
- The
amount value must be a number, either integer or decimal
- The
PointDefinitionId value has to be a positive integer value and must exist in the “PointDefinitionId” database table
- The
transactionDate value must be in the format2019-06-13T12:00:25+1:00
- The
transactionType value must be either “purchase”, “return”, “adjustment” or “rewardvoucher”
- The
expireAfterMonthsInactive must be a positive number higher than 0
- The fields
validto and expireAfterMonthsInactive can not be added in the same row
After your files pass the validation, they will be imported to a blob storage and remain there until all files in the batch are imported.
The system will then read the files from blob storage and start importing all rows to the database.
When that is done the system will update PointAmountLeft for all your contacts so that the value matches the newly imported data.
