File import routines are configurable workflows that take a file from an upload (or an SFTP drop, or an email attachment) and load its contents into a datastore. They're how you migrate from spreadsheets, sync from suppliers, or accept ad-hoc batch updates from users.
Supported Source File Formats
- CSV (UTF-8, latin-1, with auto-detect)
- TSV / pipe-delimited
- Excel (.xlsx, .xls)
- JSON (array of objects)
- XML (with XPath mapping)
- Fixed-width text
What Happens
- File is uploaded or fetched from the configured source.
- Format auto-detected; headers parsed if present.
- Each row mapped per the column-mapping rules to a destination row schema.
- Row-level transforms applied (date parsing, lookups, default values).
- Validation runs — required fields, type checks, referential checks.
- Action taken: insert new rows, update existing rows (matched by key), upsert (do both), or write to a staging table for review.
- Summary report generated with counts and per-row errors.
Worked Examples
- Customer migration: One-off import of 50,000 customers from the old CRM's CSV export. Map columns, upsert by email, run.
- Daily price feed: Supplier drops a CSV onto SFTP each morning at 04:00. Sync prices and stock levels onto the Products datastore.
- User self-service bulk update: Sales rep uploads a CSV of leads they collected at a trade show; routine inserts into Leads with the rep's user ID attached.
- Email-attachment import: Reports@ mailbox receives daily XLSX files; routine parses and feeds into the reporting datastore.