The intelliHR Data Import / Export is designed to allow administrators to import and export data from intelliHR quickly and easily with minimal assistance from the intelliHR support team. Extensive guides can be accessed within the Data Import / Export pages within your platform; however, the article below is designed to help you identify and troubleshoot common issues that users may run into. The most common issues often relate to data entry and formatting. This guide helps you to identify and troubleshoot any of these issues that you may come across whilst using the Data Import / Export.
This article covers:
Common Issues
- Date Formatting Errors
- Missing or Duplicated Column Heading Errors
- Effective Start and End Dates and The Importance of Them
- What Each Person_Lookup Type Refers to (Employee ID vs. UUID vs. intelliHR iID vs. Display Name)
Troubleshooting Tips
Date Formatting Errors
Dates in the Data Import / Export need to be formatted in (YYYY-MM-DD eg. 2022-03-22) to be uploaded successfully into IntelliHR. This can be formatted in Excel by following the steps below.
- Press CTRL+1.
- In the Format Cells box, select the Date tab.
- Under Type, pick a date format (YYYY-MM-DD)
Missing or Duplicated Column Heading Errors
Each column needs to have a relevant heading to match the areas in the intelliHR system. This allows the Data Import / Export to match the information and update it accordingly without issues.
If missing or duplicated columns are uploaded into the intelliHR system, the Data Import / Export will not be able to locate and create or update the necessary information or can override important information with duplicated columns.
For example, the screenshot below has duplicated column headings of the update_start_date. This will cause issues as the Data Import / Export will read the initial column with the relevant information, it will then continue on to read the second column with no information, overriding all the correct information to be blank on the system.
If there are missing column heading as shown in the example below, the system will not be able to locate the appropriate field to update and will either not be able to perform the update or could override the current data.
Effective Start and End Dates and the Importance of Them
Start and End Dates are important in specifying when the employee started their job or role in your organisation. This is important record keeping for any business.
When this column is provided the column cannot be left empty as this will override any important information already in the intelliHR system.
Examples of start or end dates not being entered could result in incorrect records as shown in the examples below.
If, for example, a start date for a remuneration update is not provided the remuneration update will backdate to the job start date which would show incorrect records of the employee's salary.
If an end date was not entered for a secondment role, there would be no record of when the role was to finish up, and again would show incorrect records of the employee's job and role.
Start and End Dates need to be provided in the YYYY-MM-DD format and in the relevant timezone code eg. 15:35:05 (AEST). If a time is not provided, then midnight at the start of the provided day will be used. If a timezone is not provided, then the tenant timezone will be used e.g. a company based in Brisbane will normally have their timezone configured to AEDT.
What Each Person_Lookup Type Is (Employee ID vs UUID vs IntelliHR ID vs Display Name)
The Person_Lookup Type column is required to import data into intelliHR as this information helps to identify the employee's information that is being updated or created.
Employee ID is a manually assigned employee identifier number and may be used by an organisation to match IDs within your tech landscape, such as payroll and intelliHR. The employee ID can be found on the employee profile > personal information tab.
UUID is a universally unique identifier that appears as a unique string of characters that identifies an employee's profile within the system. A UUID can be found in the URL of a person’s profile, eg yourtenant.intellihr.net/spa/people/UUID.
IntelliHR ID is an automatically assigned, auto-incrementing value created in intelliHR and can be found in the employee's profile > personal information tab.
Display Name is the employee's name in the intelliHR system and can be found in the employee profile or the people directory.