Importing Points

Points awards points to the members in the file you upload — and takes points away, if that's what you need. A positive number adds to a member's balance, a negative number deducts from it.

Find it in the admin under Reports & Imports › Imports, at app.fanmaker.com/admin/settings/imports. Pick Points from the What are you importing? picker, then click Download example CSV to start from a file with the right headers.

How to fill out your CSV file

1. email — and it has to come first

This import identifies members by their email address, in the first column of the file. An email column further along won't do.

2. points

The number of points for that row. The value is added to whatever the member already has:

• 1000 adds a thousand points

• -2000 takes two thousand away

3. explanation

The message the member sees explaining why they got the points. It can't be blank.

If every row shares the same reason, you can leave this column out entirely and type the reason once in the Reason for these points field in the upload window instead. It's then applied to every row in the file. One or the other is required.

4. identifier — optional

Your own reference for this award, used once and only once. Leave it out and the name of your file is used instead.

5. expire — optional

Points to expire rather than award. Whatever you write here is deducted, whichever sign you use.

Example Entry

A file with the headers email, identifier, points and explanation, and two rows:

• [email protected] — VIP signup — 1000 — Thank you for signing up for our VIP Program!

• [email protected] — Points deduction — -2000 — These points will be deducted

This awards [email protected] a thousand points and takes two thousand from [email protected].

Worth knowing

Tip: Keep your identifier unique and meaningful. A member is only ever scored once per identifier, so you can re-upload the same file with more people added each time and nobody gets paid twice — as long as the identifier is exactly the same. Rows that have already been awarded come back as skipped, and the results tell you how many.

Note: A row fails when we can't find the member, when the explanation is blank, or when the points come to zero. Zero is the value that does nothing — a negative value is a deduction and works fine.

Note: The results file reports how many members were awarded and the total points awarded. It's worth a look after every run.