Pre-Import Requirements 

Before importing the accounts data, you will need to make sure that you satisfy some criteria to have a clean Customer Data Platform on Lattice Atlas.

 

Identifying Account ID

Account ID is a unique column that identifies each account separately. The Account ID column is used as a key column to join different objects (Accounts, Contacts, and Products) together as well as deduplicate your accounts. In-depth thought must be given before deciding on the Account ID column.

• The ID must not be empty. If a column is sparsely populated, it is not suitable for an ID column
• It should be stable, meaning the column does not change frequently over time
• It should be available as soon as the account is created. This makes sure that every record can be associated with an ID
• It should be unique

 

Choosing File Column Names

The platform does not allow to use duplicate names. The platform has a smart feature for auto-mapping and hence names such as,  “Account ID”,”accountid”,” account id”, etc will all be identified as the ID column. Using it more than once causes a duplicate column issue and fails the upload.

The Lattice Platform uses columns names and terms that are reserved to the platform to perform internal operations. These are called Reserved Columns. For example, “Rating” is given to every account and cannot be used in the input file. In such cases, you will need to change the column name to something else while uploading. Also, if a column is mapped as ID, and the file still has an “Account ID” as another column in it, the upload will fail with duplicate column issue.

 

Importing Street Address

We do not encourage uploading street information on the account’s address. As the file import expects a CSV format, any address information without double quotes or having newline or tab characters in them could lead to incorrect parsing. The street information is available through Lattice Data Cloud.

 

Column Name Limits

There a fixed length you can have on each column name. The maximum length a column name can have is 57 characters.

 

Incremental Loading

The accounts can be split into multiple files and loaded incrementally. This is helpful when the accounts list can come from multiple systems.

There are standard attributes that are required in order to perform the basic operations. They are created to conform all the different schemas on different platforms into one schema in Atlas. There are certain optional attributes that may be provided to leverage advanced features on the Lattice Platform. And, finally, there are custom attributes that allow you to import any special information that you have on your accounts. All the attributes along with the Lattice Data Cloud are available for Advanced Segmentation.

 

Creating Import Templates

In order to import first party data into Atlas, the columns from the data file have to be mapped to fields in Lattice. Each field mapped is an attribute about your Account that can be used across different use cases on the platform. Once the field mapping is complete, an Account Import Template is generated. This template can be used to 

1. Import data files through UI manually

2. Import data files in an automated fashion

The templates page can be accessed by clicking on the "Import Data" button on the My Data page. 

 

 

A page showing all the objects will be be listed along with a "Create Template" option on each. Select the "Create Template" on Accounts. 

 

Upload the Accounts data file. The file could be a sample or the actual file that needs to be imported. Atlas will take you through the field mapping process shown below screen by screen.

Step 1

Attribute	Definition	Type
ID	This is a unique column that identifies each account separately. The Account ID column will be used as a key to join to other objects as well as dedupe your Accounts Universe. The column mapped as ID may be re-used in later pages to map to other fields.	Standard

 

 

 

Step 2

Attribute	Definition	Type
Other ID	This page allows you to map other ID columns on the Account. The Other IDs are used as a reference during campaign launch to other systems. You are allowed to give a display name, system name from which the ID is pulled and map the column in the file. You are allowed to re-use your ID field here. You are allowed to have more than one Other ID.  Example: If you plan to launch plays to other systems such as Marketo using Atlas Campaign workflow, you are required to provide the Marketo ID as a Other ID on this page.	Other

 

 

Step 3

Attribute	Definition	Type
Website	The domain or URL of the account’s business. You may also provide email addresses and the Atlas will parse the domain. This field is used for matching to Lattice Data Cloud (LDC). This field is still optional when Company Name or DUNS are provided. This is also a reserved name, see Choosing File Column Names. The field can accept alphanumeric characters.	Standard
Company Name	The registered or trade style name of the business. This field is used for matching. This field if optional when the website or DUNS are provided. This is also a reserved name, see Choosing File Column Names. The field can accept alphanumeric characters.	Standard
City	The name of the city where the account is located. This field is used in matching to LDC. The field is optional, but providing city can improve the accuracy of the match. This is also a reserved name, see Choosing File Column Names. The field can accept only alpha characters.	Standard
State	The name of the state where the account is located. This field is used in matching to LDC. The field is optional, but providing state can improve the accuracy of the match. This is also a reserved name, see Choosing File Column Names. The field can accept only alpha characters.	Standard
D-U-N-S	A unique nine-digit identification number of the physical location of the business. It is obtained from Dun & Bradstreet. It is used for matching to LDC. This field is optional when the website or company name are provided. This is also a reserved name, see Choosing File Column Names. The field can accept only alpha characters.	Standard
Phone Number	The registered contact phone number of the business. This field is used for matching to LDC. The field is optional, but providing phone number can improve the accuracy of the match. This is also a reserved name, see Choosing File Column Names. The field can accept alphanumeric characters.	Standard
Country	The name of the country where the business is physically located. This field is used for matching to LDC. The field is mandatory when the company name is provided. If not provided, Atlas will default those field to “USA”. This is also a reserved name, see Choosing File Column Names. The field can accept only alpha characters.	Standard
Postal Code	The Postal Code (zip) of the physical location of the business. This field is used for matching to LDC. The field is optional, but providing postal code can improve the accuracy of the match. This is also a reserved name, see Choosing File Column Names. The field can accept alphanumeric characters.	Standard
Type	Used to associate a type to the account. Customers usually use this field to tag the journey stage of the account, such as “Prospect”, “Key Account”, “Commercial”, etc.  This field is optional. The field can accept alphanumeric characters.	Other
Account Business Segment	Used to associate a segment tag to the account. Customers usually use this field to combine accounts into few groups to compare. This field is optional but is required for calculating “% Share of Wallet” Curated Attribute. Such as, a customer may use this field to tag they sell into - “Tech”, “Manufacturing”, “Healthcare”, etc. The field can accept alphanumeric characters.	Other
Longitude	The geocoordinate of the physical location of the business. The field can accept alphanumeric characters. The field is optional.	Other
Latitude	The geocoordinate of the physical location of the business. The field can accept alphanumeric characters. The field is optional.	Other
Industry	The industry name in which the account runs its business. The field is optional. The field can accept only alpha characters.	Other
Estimated Yearly Revenue	The annual sales revenue of the business. The field is optional. The field can accept only numeric values.	Other
Estimated Yearly Revenue Currency	The currency used by the business for trade. The field is optional. The field can accept only alphanumeric values.	Other

 

Step 4

Attribute	Definition	Type
Custom Attributes	This page allows you to bring all the 1st party data on the account and make them available on Atlas. This is a strong feature that allows you to create a 360 view of your account. The fields are optional. You may also choose to ignore any field from your file on this page. Once the field is mapped, the field types have to be made sure. Incorrect mapping of the field’s data type can result in blank values or even failure of the Import job. You are not allowed to use reserved names for any custom attributes, see Choosing File Column Names.	Account Extensions

 

*Note: If the user has previously mapped any custom fields, this page also shows all previously mapped custom attributes. Please make sure that the data type for these fields are correct. Lattice will automatically detect data types based on values in the input, but the detect is not 100% accurate. 

Step 5 (Validation)

In this step, lattice platform will automatically validate field mappings and detect common errors (see below).

• All required fields are being mapped
• Validate date attributes are correctly detected including timezone
• Check data type of fields (e.g. Numbers mapped to Text)

Lattice shows all errors and will provide an option for the user to fix these errors before going to the next and final step.

Save Template (Final Step)

Once the upload and field mapping process is complete, Atlas will provide you an option to import the data along with the template creation. If you check the option, the file is queued for validation and import. You will need to confirm by clicking “Submit”. Clicking “Submit” along with the import data option will take you to Jobs page. You will be able to track the progress of the job on this page. For more information on the jobs processing, please refer to the Data Processing and Analysis tab under the Job Page.

 

Further more, Atlas also provides the option of changing the saved template with the "Edit Template" option. When it is clicked, the user will be guided through the same field mapping workflow to map/re-map the columns from the input file.

Manual Import through UI

Atlas now has the Accounts template ready to import data. Click on "Do a one-off Import" and upload the Accounts with the same template that was created. The import can later be tracked from the Data Processing and Analysis page. 

 

 

Automated Imports

Atlas provides the capability of setting up automation for recurring imports. Please visit the Setting up Import Automation for more information.