As a best practice, it is important to first bring in core data elements associated with a person - followed by additional data points in subsequent imports. This core import establishes the records and provides a destination for the future data points.
In general, the core data included in an initial Person import includes a unique field from an institution's legacy system (such as a Colleague, Advance, or Jenzebar ID). Set up in Slate as a 'unique for merging' field, these fields make it possible to match records in Slate with records from other systems.
In addition to a custom 'unique for merging' field, Slate will attempt to find a matching person record using several other data elements. These elements are described in detail in the Data Import Matching Criteria documentation.
Additional core data elements for person records include: Name, Date of Birth, Email, Gender, Addresses, Phone Numbers, etc. This initial upload of core data will establish the base of a person record in Slate, including the unique field that will be used as a key for subsequent data uploads.