Import your students

Before you start

• Build your belt ladder first (Admin console → Progress → Belt ladder). A belt your ladder does not name is asked about once, before anything is imported.
• Imports are for the dojo's owners and administrators.

Importing

1. Open Admin console → People → Members and find Import students from another system.
2. Press Choose a CSV file (.csv, .tsv or .txt, up to 8 MB and 5,000 rows). Nothing is added to your dojo until you have seen exactly what would happen.
3. Say what each column means: student ID from your old system, name, email, parent's name, email and phone, an emergency contact's name and phone, belt and its date, join date, date of birth (offered only where dates of birth are switched on for your dojo), programme, notes — or Don't import this column.
4. Press Check what would happen. If some dates in the file could be read two ways, such as 03/04/2024, you are asked once how your file writes them. If any rows need an answer, These rows need you comes first; once they are answered, the file is checked again.
5. You see how many students are new, already here, cannot be read, or are repeated in the file.
6. If the file names a belt your ladder does not, such as "Yellow" where your ladder says "Yellow Belt", choose the rank it means, or No rank, and press Use these ranks. Your answer holds for every new student with that belt, and is kept when the file is checked again. Import waits until every belt has an answer; then press it.

If an import stops part-way, press Import again before you leave the page, and it carries on where it left off. Once you leave the page it cannot be picked up again.

How students are matched

• Your own student ID is the one thing that matches a row to a student by itself.
• A name that matches a student you already have is only a suggestion: you choose Same person as, This is a NEW student, or Skip this row for each row, and all the suggested Same person as matches can be confirmed together with Review and confirm the suggested matches.
• A name the file repeats is asked once per name: one student, or different students.

A student who is already on your roster is never overwritten by an import.

What an import keeps

A new student's record gets their name, their rank (in your ladder's own words, whichever way the file spelled it), the date they joined your dojo, and your student ID. Where your dojo keeps dates of birth, a new student's goes on their private record, which only the student, their linked family, and your administrators and lead coach can see. A new student's parent's phone and email and their emergency contact go on the student's family contacts: the parent as a parent or guardian, the emergency contact as an emergency contact only, never as a guardian. Your coaches and administrators can see them on the student's page, and your administrators and lead coach can change them there. A number that is not a real phone number, or an address that is not a real email address, is left out, and the check says so. Being on a student's family contacts does not connect anyone to the student, and is not permission to text them. A parent's email there can be written to about your dojo, never news and offers (Admin console → Messages → Email). A student already on your roster keeps their rank, join date and contacts as they are: the file never changes them. Programmes and notes from the file are not stored on the record. As each row is imported, our copy of your file loses that row's columns. What the import read from them (names, email addresses, student IDs, ranks and dates) stays until it is removed, starting 14 days after the import finishes (a very large file is removed over several nights, 500 rows a night); only the names and email addresses are used, to connect families.

Connecting the families

After an import, See the families in this file lists the addresses the file holds, and offers to invite each family to its own students, parents who are already members included. Nobody is connected because their account has the same address as your file: each person is connected to their students when they open the link in the invitation email. An invitation is for one address, is valid for 14 days, and never names a student in the email. If an email cannot be sent, the family's row says so; invite them again from People, or connect each student from their record. You can come back to it for 14 days after the import finishes: open Import students from another system again, and press Connect the families beside the import under Families still to connect. After that, invite a family from their student's record.