Newbie question:
I suspect through poor import process, many contacts are not linked properly to Company.
Initially a contact’s page might look like this:
First Name: Ada
Last Name: Smith
Company: Zelda Industries
Company: Choose a company.
Once linked it looks like this:
Company: Zelda Industries x
First Name: Ada
Last Name: Smith
I have hundreds of links to make to correct. Is there a batch process that can speed the linking process?
Hi @Daniel_Bliss. There is a very simple process to easily correct this. It will involve exporting your entire list, via the Export action. When you export, you will only need to select the ID (Infusionsoft Contact ID) and the Company Name fields, to export.
Once you have exported, you will be able to head to your Admin>Data Cleanup area, to perform what is known as a Modify Existing Records Import. From here, you will upload the file you have just exported, and go through the field matching to ensure that the ID field is matching to the Infusionsoft Contact ID field, and the CompanyName field is matching to Company, in the dropdowns.
When you reach the next stage of this Existing Records Import, there will be a box that you need to tick, telling the system to create a company record for these contacts, and attach the contact to it.
Now, you may ask, what if some of them are already correct. That will not matter. The system performs a case sensitive search, before creating a new company record to attach the contact too, so any contacts that are already displaying correctly, will remain as they were, and only the contacts that are not attached to the company will be modified.
I created a really cool visual of this whole process that you can watch 2017-08-08_1514 I go through the steps of exporting my list, and then show how to import, via the Modify Existing Records, import, and the option that you need to select, on the last step of the import process.
I also wanted to share a help article that talks a little more about the Modify Existing Records import, for reference. http://help.infusionsoft.com/userguides/contact-management/import-contacts/mass-update-contacts-with-a-spreadsheet
That’s a great solution. I still get duplicate companies because of slight differences in how contacts enter the company name. e.g. with LLC or without. I did a big export/import clean-up when I first took over but duplicate companies still creep in.
I’d love to see a duplicate check for companies to id potential duplicates and a merge company function that would combine all contacts into a single company.
Wouldn’t it also be helpful to have a field on the company record where we can enter the standard company email domain(s) “@company.com” and have the processing assume any new contact with that @company.com should be added to that company?
Managing contacts within company is a real pain point for me since we do b2b sales with a long sales cycle. It’s really important to see the activity going on at the company level, across contacts. Whenever there are multiple versions of the same company we miss the big picture.
I agree with Nora, the Infusionsoft company section makes no sense at all, and there is no way to simply search contact records by company (that I could figure out) easily/quickly. I’m not sure what the design logic was for this separation of contact & company records. I love Nora’s idea of attaching contacts to a company if the domain is the same, because she is right, sometimes company names are typed incorrectly or differently.