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1 - Introduction

One of the functions of InphoniteVoice is its ability to import customer and appointment data from outside sources. Usually, this is some type of scheduling software. You may also create and import your own comma-delimited (CSV) file.

This article discusses importing customer and appointment data from outside sources.


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2 - More Information

Customer and appointment data would normally be imported on any day that voice, email, SMS/text, or Twitter notifications will be sent. Usually this is a day or two prior to the appointment.


Daily Import

For regular, daily appointment calls, the InphoniteVoice Admin tool can be configured to handle import of the information automatically. This is normally done by an Inphonite Technical Support Engineer at the time of program installation. Should you need assistance modifying the import at a later date, Inphonite Technical Support will be happy to assist you.

The regular appointment import:

  • Runs automatically each day
  • Either points to an ASCII file containing appointment data or connects directly to the scheduling software's database via an ODBC/OLEDB connection
  • Requires that the appointment data be exported to an ASCII file each day prior to import if we are importing from a file rather than directly from the database
  • Can be configured to import almost any ASCII/text file
  • Will not import from non-text files sources such as Excel spreadsheets

The basic specifications of a source file importable by InphoniteVoice are:

  • The file must be an ASCII text file. The file may be tab-delimited, comma separated, or formatted (as a report).
  • It must always be saved to the same location, with the same filename.
  • The file must contain at least the following fields:
    • Patient name, first and last.
    • Patient phone number.
    • Appointment date.
    • Appointment time.
  • The file should included appointment data for the day to be called (rather than historical appointments along with it).
  • If messages will include information such as the Provider name or Location, or give instructions based upon Appointment Type or other criteria, these fields must be included in the file.
  • The file must be created from the scheduling system in the same way each time so that the format of the file and the data within it remains consistent.

NOTE: If you are not importing appointments but contacts only, appointment information is not required.

Once your daily import has been setup and configured by an Inphonite representative, no regular intervention on your part is required to "run" the import.


Special Imports

Special notifications that are not included in your daily import may at times need to be delivered. Examples of such notifications could be:

  • Notifications to staff that the office is closed due to extreme weather
  • Notifications to patients of the availability of flu vaccines

Customer name and contact information can be imported from a standard comma-delimited (CSV) file in the Import/Export node on the InphoniteVoice tree.

To import your contact information there, make sure the 'Direction' field is set to Import, and choose the information to be imported (i.e. Contacts and/or Appointments) from your file. Select the Execute Import button. A Browse button will appear. Select the Browse button and navigate to the file to import. Once the import is complete, the View Log File button will appear. The log file will show exactly how many rows imported successfully, updated successfully, were skipped, and generated errors.

When creating a file for importing Contacts in this manner, the file should be formatted as follows:

  • First Name, Last Name, and Primary Number or
  • First Name, Birth date, and Primary Number or
  • First Name and Source Key

When importing both Contacts and Appointments, the file should be formatted in this way:

FirstName,LastName,PrimaryNumber,StartDate
John,Smith,520-555-1212,1/1/2010 3:00 PM

For further information on formatting your source file, click the Help button on the toolbar from the Import/Export page, and click "Importing Data" at the bottom.


Reviewing Imported Data

Once an import has run — either your daily import or your manual, "special" import — you will be able to see the information imported in the Contacts screen and/or Appointments calendar.

In order to track down the cause of records not being imported, InphoniteVoice will log details regarding the importing in files located in C:\Program Files\InphoniteVoice\Extracts\Logs. Each time an import is executed automatically, a separate log file will be created, with a date/time stamp in the name of the file. Simply open the file using a text editor to review.

In addition, if your daily import reads an ASCII/text file, after an import executes, InphoniteVoice will move the source file to preserve a copy of it. The files are moved to C:\Program Files\InphoniteVoice\Extracts\Imported, and will include a date/time stamp pre-pended in the file name. Should you wish to see what was imported on a given day, these files may be opened in a text editor as well.


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3 - Applies To

InphoniteVoice 2010


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4 - Support

If you are unable to find answers to your question, our Technical Support Department offers per-incident support and annual maintenance contracts.

- OPEN A SUPPORT CASE -

All requests received between 9:00am and 6:00pm Eastern (6:00am and 3:00pm Pacific), Monday through Friday, will be responded to that same day. Our Technical Support team responds to requests in the order received. Requests from customers with Premium Support will be placed at the head of the queue and attended to by the next available Support Technician.

PLEASE NOTE: Before contacting our Technical Support Team, please review our article "Before You Contact Support".

For more tips and useful information, be sure to checkout the InphoniteBlog at blog.inphonite.com

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Keywords: importing, exporting, notifications, appointments, contacts

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