When to Import From Contacts

Import your invitees from Contacts when you want to make use of specific lists from your Contacts collection. Your Contacts collection would always contain updated information as it's always synced with the data submitted by your participants when they register for your events. For more information on how data syncs and propagates to the Contacts collection, see the article Collections in GEVME.

Propagation Rules

When importing invitees from Contacts:

  1. Existing records in your Invitees collection will be updated (if the data in their corresponding contacts record is different).

Thus, consider the scenario where you have the following setup:



When the import is performed, the result will be as follows, where Peter's record will be updated and Marc's record created:



Importing Invitees From Contacts

To import invitees from Contacts, follow these steps:

1. Click on Invitees in the left-hand navigation.




2. If you don't have any invitee, you will see the following screen:



Click on the Import Invitees button.

3. If, however, you already have invitees, you will see the invitees grid:



In that case, click on the Import button in the grid toolbar.

4. STEP 1 - Choose your import source
This will open the Import Invitees wizard popup.



5. Click on the Import from Contacts button then click on the Next button.

6. STEP 2 - Configurations
This will bring up the Configurations screen:



The settings and options on this screen are:

  1. Import from
    Choose Contacts from the dropdown. 
  2. Match records based on
    This option allows you to choose which field to use to match your records between your import target (in this case Invitees) and your import source (in this case Contacts) during the import. The values under this option are the following:

    1. Contact ID
    By default, this option will always be there. The Contact ID is a unique system-generated number assigned to each contact record. Every invitee is then linked to their corresponding contact record via the Contact ID.

    2. Any field with unique values
    Any other fields with unique values in your Contacts form will also be listed in the dropdown, e.g. by default, the Email field. 
  3. If duplicate records are detected/
    This option allows you to choose the action to take when matching records are found between the source and the target. The possible settings under this option are:

    1. Update with new information
    This option will update the information of the matching record in the target destination (if the information is different from the source).

    2. Skip
    This option will not update the information of the matching record in the target destination. 
  4. If duplicate records are detected
    This option allows you to choose the action to take when matching records are found between the source and the target. The possible settings under this option are:

    1. Choosing Yes for this option will add the imported records to a static list of your choice immediately after they are imported. 
  5. Click on the Next button


7. STEP 3 - Choose your list

This will bring up the List(s) Selection screen.



(1) Choose the list(s) that you want to import by clicking on the Choose button.



(2) Then click on the Choose list(s) button.



8. STEP 4 - Match your columns & import your records

This will bring you to the Matching Columns screen.



This step allows you to match the fields in your invitees form to their corresponding from your Contacts. By default, GEVME will smartly read field names and do the matching, but you can of course override this decision and do the matching manually.


Fields for which GEVME cannot find a match will be marked as "Will not be imported", for example, the Country field in the screenshot below:



To do the matching manually, simply select the field in your Contacts from the dropdown for the corresponding invitee field. For example, if your country fields was called Origin in Contacts, select it from the dropdown:



Note: The field name of each field is shown in brackets next to it.


This will then match the Country field in your invitee form to the Origin field in your Contacts:



9. Once you are satisfied with the matching, click on the Import records button.


10. STEP 5 - Results of import

After the import, you will be presented with the Results of import screen.



On this screen will be reported the following:

  1. The number of records in your source.
  2. The static list to which the records were added (if applicable).
  3. The number of records added.
  4. The number of records updated (or skipped, based on the setting that you chose in Step 2).
  5. The number of records which could not be imported.

    Note: For the records which were added, updated or which could not be imported, click on the respective links to get more details.