Importing contacts from a CSV file

What you need

• The permission to import contacts and the permission to create contacts. If the "Import" button is missing, or AISAR says you lack permission, ask a company administrator to grant them in the roles section.
• A file in CSV format (.csv or .txt extension) up to 10 MB, with no more than 50,000 rows and 200 columns. The first row must hold the column headers.
• Each row you want imported needs at least a phone number or a name. Duplicates are matched by phone number within your company.

Step 1. Prepare the file

In Excel or Google Sheets, save the table as "CSV (comma delimited)". AISAR detects the encoding and delimiter itself, and if it guesses wrong you can pick them by hand in "File settings". The easiest start is the ready-made template: the first step of the wizard has a "Download template" button.

The file can carry a first name, last name (or both in one column), phone, email, company, job title, date of birth, tags, a responsible employee and a note. Several columns can go into phone, email, tags and notes: the contact receives all of the values.

Step 2. Upload the file

1. Open the Contacts section and click "Import". On a phone it sits in the "⋯" menu as "Import from a file".
2. Drag the CSV file into the window or click "Choose file". AISAR uploads it and shows the headers it found.
3. If names and Cyrillic look garbled, open "File settings" and choose the encoding (UTF-8 or Windows-1251) and the delimiter; the file is then re-read.

Step 3. Map the columns

For each column pick an AISAR field, or leave "Do not import". AISAR recognises some columns by their names. You can map the rest by hand or click "Map with AI": the AI sees only the column headers and the first 20 rows of the file, and never receives the other rows. Any suggestion can be changed by hand or reverted.

Options are set on the same step. If a contact with this phone number already exists: "Skip" (the row is not imported), "Update empty fields" (the default: only what the contact does not have yet is filled) or "Overwrite" (the file data replaces the contact data; requires the permission to edit contacts). A tag for everything imported (handy for finding the whole import later), a default responsible employee (used where the file is empty) and the "Link to WhatsApp by number" switch, so an incoming message from that number does not create a duplicate contact. No messages are sent.

Step 4. Check without writing

AISAR runs the file as a dry run and shows the outcome: how many contacts will be created, how many updated, how many duplicates sit inside the file (the first row wins) and how many rows have errors. Below is a preview of the first rows as they will land in AISAR. The rows with errors can be downloaded as a separate file, fixed and uploaded again. Rows with errors do not stop the rest from importing.

Step 5. Start the import

Click "Import". The import runs in the background: you can close the window and a notification arrives when it is done. Afterwards download the report with the outcome of every row, or open the contacts carrying the import tag. If you changed the mapping or options after the check, AISAR asks you to check the file again.

What the import does and does not do

• The import sends no messages to contacts and does not trigger automations such as "new contact, send a greeting": otherwise a list of thousands of numbers would get a mass mailing and the channel could be banned. If you do want a greeting, run a deliberate broadcast to the import tag.
• Imported contacts are not pushed to external CRMs (Bitrix24, amoCRM) automatically: the file usually comes from that very CRM. The "contact created" webhook event is not sent for imported contacts.
• One import per company runs at a time, with at most 20 uploads per day per company. The file and the import record are kept for 7 days and then deleted, so download the report in time.
• A contact accepts up to 10 phone numbers and 10 emails; extras are dropped with a warning in the report.

If something goes wrong

• "Too many uploads in a row": file uploads are limited to 10 per hour per employee, wait and try again.
• "An import is already running": wait for the current import in the company to finish, then start a new one.
• "The source file is already deleted" or "The import can no longer be changed": upload the file again.
• If the same customer still ended up twice, merge the cards following Duplicate contacts: why they happen and how to merge them.

To automate uploads from your own system, use the API; see the "CSV contact import" section in the contacts reference.