Troubleshooting Upload Dataset
  • 09 Nov 2023
  • 2 minute read
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Troubleshooting Upload Dataset

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Article Summary

Now that you have the fundamentals of your instance configured, you are ready to begin filling it with data. The Data Import tool provides a self-service method for importing both historical and live data. At times, you may have difficulty locating the missing link between incoming data and data that appears in Slate. The following steps will help you locate this missing link. Any tests should be completed in your up-to-date test environment.

Prior to getting started, verify that your source file includes all data points you wish to import.

Verify Source Settings

  • Confirm that the Source Format is mapped to the dataset you wish to update (such as Persons / Applications or Organizations).

  • Check the Safe / Unsafe settings to determine if the dataset is updating active applicants when specified.

  • Reconcile your file format and specified File Format in Upload Dataset.

  • Select Update Only if the file should not create new Slate records.

Check the Dataset Field and Value Mappings

  • Confirm that the source fields in your import have been mapped to the correct destination in Slate.

  • Check your value mappings to confirm that all expected values are mapped, and map or append values as appropriate.

  • Make sure that your dataset includes the necessary data points to create or match on records, such as basic biographic data (First, Last, Birthdate, Email) or relevant unique identifiers (Slate ID, App ID, custom field set as “Unique for Merging”).

  • When attempting to create an application, an Application Round must be mapped.

Check the Settings on the Destination Field in Slate

  • Safe / Unsafe

  • Prompt vs. Store Value

  • Single Value / Multiple Values

  • Append / Replace

File Size Considerations

There is no size limit to importing records/data/materials into Slate. However, there is a time limit of 15 minutes. After 15 minutes, an import will fail. We recommend breaking large files into 50,000 record segments. This will significantly improve performance. Feel free to try the import of these smaller files in your test environment first, to ensure that the results are as you expect. We recommend importing larger files early in the morning or late in the evening as this is the window where activity is likely at its lowest point in your Slate instance.

Unicode - UTF-8 Support

UTF-8 consists of more than 128,000 characters (accounting for Greek, Chinese, Cyrillic, Japanese, and many other non-Latin alphabets).

Slate supports Unicode; however, Excel does not support saving CSV files in UTF-8. Because of this, non-English characters need to be exported by third-party vendors as text files.

Slate currently fully supports the western European character set (Latin).


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