Loading your data from spreadsheets

Some imports match rows to people or catalogue entries that must already exist, so a little sequencing saves rework:

1. Create your roles and qualification definitions first. These aren’t spreadsheet imports — you create each one in its editor (Manage › Roles and Manage › Qualifications), because each carries its own eligibility rules. See the Roles and eligibility guide.
2. Import your members (below) — the big one.
3. Then grant qualifications, add external contacts, and load events from spreadsheets. Granting a qualification and attaching a speaker both match by name/email to existing members, which is why members come first.

Go to Members and choose Import members. Upload your file; CDRoster detects the columns and suggests a mapping to its fields (name, email, phone, address, age, and so on). Confirm the mapping, preview which rows are new, then commit. Existing members are skipped — only new rows are added — so re-running a sheet is safe. Full detail is in the Importing members from a spreadsheet guide.

Once your qualification definitions and members exist, you can grant a qualification to a whole list of people at once. Go to Manage › Qualifications, open the qualification (for example Active Speaker), and on its holders page choose Import from spreadsheet.

Your sheet just needs a name and/or email column. CDRoster matches each row to an existing member, you confirm the matches (picking between people where a name is ambiguous), then it grants the qualification to everyone matched. Rows that don’t match a member are skipped — add those people first. This is the quick way to load “all active speakers” or “all musicians”.

External contacts are people who live outside your member directory — visiting speakers, parents, mentors. Go to Manage › External contacts and choose Import. Map the name (required), email, phone, and notes columns, preview, then add. Contacts already on file (matched by name + email) are skipped, so re-running is safe.

For a run of individual, dated events — a term of special lectures, a set of combined meetings — go to Manage › Occurrences and choose Import events. Pick the scheduling group the events belong to, then upload a sheet with a row per event: name, date, time, and optionally duration and a speaker (matched to your external contacts). Preview, then create.

For a regularly repeating event (every week, every 3rd Thursday, and so on), don’t import dates — create a recurring event instead, which generates the occurrences for you. See the recurring event guide.

• Bring the spreadsheet you already have. There’s no fixed template — the column-guessing and mapping step adapts to your headings. The samples are just a convenient starting point.
• Nothing is written until you confirm. Every importer shows a preview first; you can go back and re-map columns before applying.
• Re-running is safe. Members and contacts skip duplicates; qualification grants are idempotent. You won’t double-create by uploading the same sheet twice.