Introducing Upload Contacts: a new beta feature designed to help you share basic contact information with Harness. Now you can easily upload CSV lists within Harness' system for easy contact tracking & future engagement.

You can now import contacts into Harness from Contacts > Upload Contacts. To start, download the CSV* template (this template includes all valid fields that can be imported).

In the template, you will be able to add the contact's first name, last name, email address, and phone number, enter if the contact has provided consent to receive emails from you/Harness, and add the contact to a text messaging list.

If you have existing contacts saved in your CRM/donor management software, export those contacts to a CSV/Excel file.

Now, add your contacts to the downloaded CSV import template. To make this quick & easy, copy columns of contact data from the export you pulled from your CRM, and paste those columns into the CSV import template.

When entering a contact's info into the template, required fields are:

All other fields are optional. Be sure to add the correct data into the correct columns.

A contact's first and last name are broken up into two columns: First Name and Last Name. If uploading a single contact that represents a couple, their first name should contact both persons' names and the last name should just be their last name (ex: first name: John & Jane, last name: Donor).

Email addresses are the unique identifier for contacts in Harness. As such, email addresses must be provided for the contact in order to import them. It is important to provide a valid email address for each contact. Valid email addresses are always in the [email protected] format. While you may be able to import invalid email addresses, the contact will not be able to receive emails from Harness, including emails you attempt to send them through our platform.

Examples of invalid email addresses are:

Phone numbers are option, but if provided must be in 10-digit format (XXX-XXX-XXXX). Country codes (ex: 1 and +1) and the use of parenthesis are unsupported and will results in an error in uploading or will create contacts with invalid phone numbers.

Examples of invalid/unsupported phone numbers are:

If a contact has provided you with consent to send them emails, you may also enter a response in the Email Consent field. Valid "yes" responses are: Yes, TRUE, and 1 (leaving the field blank also defaults email consent to yes). Entering No, FALSE, or 0 will result in the contact's email consent to be turned off, preventing them from receiving emails from/sent through Harness.

If a contact with the same email address already exists in Harness, their email address will not be able to be imported again. However, if the contact had previously not provide email consent but now has, their email consent can be updated using the importing tool by entering their First Name, Last Name, Email Address, and Email Consent into the import template.

When adding the contact to a text messaging list, the list can be an already existing list found in your Harness Dashboard under Text Messages > Lists, or can be a list that does not yet exist. If adding to an existing list, copy the exact list name from Text Messages > Lists and paste the list name in the List column. If the list doesn't exist yet, when the contacts are uploaded the list will be created and will be named exactly what has been entered into the List column.

Once you've added your contacts to the downloaded CSV template and have confirmed that the contact data is valid, now you can upload the CSV file to Harness to import those contacts. Be sure to have saved the file in the .CSV format.

Select the Upload CSV Template button then locate and select the file to upload. Once selected, you will be brought to your Saved Contacts and may see a message displayed at the top of the page saying: "Uploading your contacts. This may take a few minutes." Once the upload has been completed, the newly uploaded contacts will be added to your Saved Contacts.

If any contacts were unable to be uploaded, an error message will be displayed at the top of the page. See Upload Errors discussed later in this guide to learn more.

After your contacts have been imported into Harness, a list of those contacts will automatically created under Text Messages > Lists, and will be titled "Imported Contacts" followed by the date & time of the upload.

Additionally, if within the CSV template you added a list name in the List column for a contact, the contact will be added to that list as well. If a list with that exact name already existed in Harness under Text Messages > Lists, the contact will be added to that list. However, if the list did not already exist, the list would be created, and the contact would be added to the newly created list.

It is possible that if a contact was added to the CSV template with missing or incomplete information that an error may occur. When that happens, an error message will display at the top of the page indicating how many contacts where successfully imported, how many contacts were unable to be imported, and a download option to download a list of the contacts that were unable to be imported.

After downloading the list of contacts that could not be imported, you will be able to see which contacts experienced an error as well as what the exact error was. You will need to correct the error and re-import those contacts using a new CSV template.

Potential errors include: