Importing from spreadsheets
An authority arrives with records already kept somewhere. Three imports bring them in: units, residents and the waitlist. All three work the same way.
- Take the template downloads an Excel workbook with the columns and a "How to fill this in" sheet. Your own .xlsx or .csv works too.
- Columns are found by their header, not their position. A title row above the headers and other sheets in the workbook are fine.
- Files are up to 2 MB.
- The first step reads the file and reports every row, good and bad, without writing anything. The second writes only the rows that passed. A bad row names its row in the file, so fix it there and upload again.
- Every import is written to the audit log.
| Import | Where | Rows per file |
|---|---|---|
| Units | Properties → a property → Import from a spreadsheet | 2,000 |
| Residents | Residents → Import residents | 5,000 |
| Waitlist | Waitlist → Import | 5,000 |
Units
One row per unit.
| Column | What goes in it |
|---|---|
| Unit | The unit's label, such as "2B". Required |
| Bedrooms | 0 to 12; 0 is a studio. Required for a new unit |
| Status | Vacant, occupied or offline. Blank is vacant |
| Notes | Anything else |
A row whose label matches a unit already on the property (ignoring case) updates that unit rather than adding a second. A file cannot mark a unit occupied; a unit becomes occupied when a household is placed in it. Two rows for the same unit are flagged.
Residents
The households already living in the authority's units. Pick Which program are these residents on? first; one file is one program.
The Residents sheet has one row per person. Rows with the same Household value are one family.
| Column | What goes in it |
|---|---|
| Household | Any ID that groups the family's rows. Required |
| First name, Last name | Required |
| Relationship | Head, spouse, child, adult or other. Exactly one head per household |
| Date of birth | Sealed, like every identity field |
| Disabled, Full-time student | Yes or no |
| Email, Phone | Head's row only |
| Move-in date, Current rent, Last recertified | Head's row only |
| Property, Unit | Optional. Both must match a property and unit on file exactly |
Four more sheets are optional: Vehicles, Pets, Emergency contacts and Evacuation. Evacuation rows can be matched by unit instead of household and say whether the person needs help leaving, where they are and any conditions. These records are not kept in Housing; they go to the linked CivicPort community, Evacuation to its evacuation list, when the household is synced.
What the import does:
- Adds each new household, and updates one already imported under the same Household value. Unchanged households are skipped.
- Places a household in a unit when Property and Unit match, unless the unit is held for a different program.
- Sets the next recertification one year after Last recertified, or one year after move-in when that is blank. A household with no unit gets no automatic recertification.
- Keeps each household's Current rent until its first recertification. See How rent is worked out.
- Sends nothing to CivicPort. The invitation, the records above and the rent go when staff press Sync with CivicPort on each resident.
The same workbook can be exported, to correct and upload again.
Waitlist
The list the office already keeps, onto one program's waitlist in the file's order. The program must be on and have a published application form. See Importing the list you already keep for the columns and how order is decided.