Importing People
Now that you’ve set up your security areas and user access, it’s time to get your people into UCare. People are the most critical aspect of getting your system up and running. Your groups, meetings, teams, forms, and processes will be resourced and populated by the people in the system. Thus, inputting profiles is the starting point for running the system effectively.
If you currently have a spreadsheet for the people in your church, you can use the Import function to transfer them to UCare without inputting individual profiles.
This Part will cover the various ways you can input people into UCare.
CSV Import
Transferring data is an easily manageable task in UCare. The Import feature in UCare makes moving people from a spreadsheet to the database seamless. Whatever spreadsheet you have, save it in CSV (Comma-separated values) format, and you are one step closer to importing all your people.
To get your Import started, click Import on the navbar:
If you need help formatting your spreadsheet, you can download an example CSV from UCare. This will give you a blank spreadsheet with headings to fill out accordingly. This can be downloaded after clicking Import.
Once the Import center is open, you will see various importing options. You can also download the example CSV from this page.
You can drag and drop your CSV file from this page or click the cloud upload icon.
At the top of the Import page, you will find various types of imports available in UCare; People, Groups, Meetings, and Payments. These options allow you to transfer data of varying kinds into the UCare database. We will be covering the import of People and Groups.
If your CSV has column headings, be sure to tick the Ignore the first row option:
Once the file has been uploaded, you must select where you want the data imported. To do this, match each UCare field name with your imported data.
Use Previous | Next to review a few imported people to ensure all data lines up. If you have data that you can’t find in the dropdown, select More info or Date if it’s a date. UCare will then use the header name to create that new type; you can call these custom fields.
It would be best for you to add a Household ID column to your spreadsheet, especially if you have multiple people with the same last name who belong to different Households. The Household ID doesn’t need to be anything complex; it just needs to be unique, as UCare will take care of the rest.
Once you are satisfied with how the data lines up, click Import. The process may take a few minutes. Once the import process is complete, you can access the data by clicking People in the navbar:
Household information can now also be accessed by clicking Households. To ensure that your church is best equipped to provide care, Households will help you better understand family units.
Importing Groups
In addition to importing all your people, UCare allows you to import any Group information. We will cover grouping your people later, but if you want to import group information, you can do so similar to your People import.
After clicking Import on the navbar, select Groups at the top of the import center:
If unsure, you can download an example CSV file to fill out.
Upload or drag and drop the CSV file to begin and match a UCare field to the imported data.
As before, use Previous | Next to review a few imported groups to ensure it all lines up. If the first row contains a header for each column, then make sure Ignore the first row is selected.
Once you are ready, click Import.
Household Set-up
After a CSV import, you can view Households by clicking the feature heading in the navbar.
This will display all households grouped by the first letter of the household name. If you pick another letter from the dropdown, it will update the list of households; the dropdown shows the number of households whose names start with that letter. Additionally, you may filter the list by Group if you prefer to search for Household members within a specific group. We will cover Groups a little later.
To edit a Person’s information, click their name to open their profile. You can search for a person using the People or Household tabs on the navbar or by typing their name in the search tool:
The search tool will give you your most recent searches and provide you with access to the latest activity search tool, which we will cover later.
Once you are in a profile, you can access the person’s information and can edit using the Options in the top right:
You can add details to each profile section by clicking the + sign.
Merging Duplicates
It is not uncommon to come across duplicates after an import, and even in the day-to-day running of the church, it is easy for a duplicate profile to emerge; these can be from spelling errors or as simple as someone having two email addresses. UCare provides you with an easy method to merge duplicate profiles. To access this feature, click People from the navbar and select Merge duplicate people in the top right corner.
This will bring up similar profiles, such as name, email, phone number, etc. Once confident that the two profiles are the same person, click Merge.
Adding People
Should you need to add people to UCare, you can do so easily using the +New button. This will prompt you to create a new Household or assign the person to an existing one.
Now that you’ve got your people in, we’re getting closer to utilizing all that UCare provides. In the next part, we’ll look at getting your people into Groups and setting up Meetings.