Ingest Data FAQ, Tips & Tricks

When should I use ingest data?

Ingest data is most commonly used for:

• Data migration for a new merchant coming to MyTime with existing data from another system
• Easily update existing data for a merchant already using MyTime, such as a large service price update
• Creating test accounts and populating those with test data

What can be ingested using ingest data?

The following resources can be imported with ingest data: 

Locations, Employees, Service Categories, Services, Employee Titles, Pricing for Services, Pricing Templates (for price by staff/location/title/group/etc), Service Duration, Duration Templates (for duration by staff/location/title/group/etc), Add On Mappings to map add-ons to individual services, Breed Groups to add breeds for pet merchants, CustomServicesMappings, CustomFields (custom fields that should be added to client profiles), Clients, Pets, Blockages, Appointments, Promo Codes, Memberships (membership setup), Client Memberships (memberships that belong to clients), Inventories, Tickets, Purchase Orders, Spiffs (used for Chatters), Classes, Gift card purchases (gift cards that belong to clients), Bundles (bundle setup) 

Each option has different things that can be imported for that resource. For example, the location import does NOT allow you to import business hours. The full file can be seen here, which contains gotchas, tips and data type requirements. 

Where can I go for more in-depth information on the data types, formatting requirements, and file structure?

This is the complete list of everything that we can import, the file format required, the column headers that the file accepts, and the places where MyTime IDs can be used. It also has gotchas that could prevent the file from importing and file requirements that can save you tons of time - https://sites.google.com/a/mytime.com/engineering-wiki/imports/generic-imports.

Can I download a blank file and simply fill in the data that I have?

Yes! You can download individual files here if you do not want to create your own files. Remember to create a manifest and zip the file(s) with the manifest before attempting to import.

Common File Issues

Some issues are fairly common when merchants or others try to use ingest data. Here are a few common mistakes to avoid:

• Zipped a ZIP

Make sure that you did not zip your zip file. If you open your zip file and there is no manifest but instead you see another zip file, then you may have zipped the zip and it will not import. See the section above titled How to create a zip file for more information.

• New line error \n 

Make sure that there are no cells that have multiple lines. The easiest way to find out if you have any cells with multiple lines is to search for \n in your file using regular expressions. This is simply a checkbox in the Find & Replace (not find, but find and replace) functionality for Excel, Sheets, LibreOffice, and so on.

• CSV Parse Error

Sometimes the CSVs that you import are invalid, so the error shown will say CSV parse error. You can use a site like https://csvlint.io/ to ensure that your CSV files are valid files.

LibreOffice Find & Replace                  

Google Find & Replace