Alex from the import-export team walks through HubSpot's updated import tool, which now lets you choose whether to create new records, update existing ones, or do both in a single import.
Foreign It's Alex on the import export team and I want to walk you through a quick demo of a new feature that we've added to the import flow, which is the ability to select whether or not you want to only create new records using import or only update existing records as you import. Now, traditionally the import flow has been create and update at all times, meaning every single import that you did, it created new records and also updated existing records as you brought data into the CRM. But let's say you got a spreadsheet from your boss and you said, hey, I want you to import this data into HubSpot, but I want you to only create new records, don't update any existing records. Now in the past, you have to sift through the spreadsheet, go back into the CRM, make sure that the data aligned that you weren't accidentally updating records that already existed in the CRM. With this update you could say, hey, I want to do a create only import and, and let HubSpot take care of that. Give us the responsibility of sifting through the spreadsheet and then you just have to import the data in to HubSpot. So we have this spreadsheet of records and we want to do a create only import. Now this last record that we have highlighted here, newest individual with email address end personmail. Com, they already exist in the CRM. We can show you the record right here. So it's called new person, the name is different, uh, and we have an email address, npersonmail. Com. Now, as we do this import, this create only import, we should see that we'll identify that this record already exists in the CRM and we won't update the name to newest individual because we're able to see that this record already exists by using that unique identifier email address to identify it. So let's go into the import flow and show you what this looks like. We're going to start the import, choose file from computer one file, one object. We're importing context, choose my file, grab that file, and here is where we will select what kind of import that we want to do. Now, by default, it's always going to be create and update. This is how import has always worked and it will continue to be the default function with an import. But you have the option here to say, hey, I want to only create new records as I go through my import. Or the opposite, I want to only update existing records. So for this one, we're going to create new contacts only and we'll Click next. We see here that all of our information is properly mapped within our file. If we open up the import mapping guide, we'll see here that we're not checking for any of the properties that are needed to update existing records because within our import we're only creating new records. So we don't need to check for and so everything looks good here on the mapping step. Click next, say that we have permission to contact these folks and we will finish our import. Now what we should see here in just a moment is that we should get an error saying hey, one of your rows was not imported because we were able to match it to an existing record. So we see here we get an error saying that hey, this is a create only import. If we go to our record for new person we should see that if we refresh page, this person's name was not updated through the import because we did a create only import. Now one more thing I want to show you. Let's say you wanted to do a multi object import into the CRM, so you wanted to update existing deals while creating new contacts. Well, with this update you can do that. You can say, hey, I want to update one object, I want to only create for the other object. So I'm going to go in, start an import file from computer. Still doing a one file import, but I'm going to do multiple objects. This time I'm going to say contacts and deals. Click Next, choose that file, grab that file and I'm going to create new contacts again. But this time I'm going to update existing deals only. When we click next we'll see that in the mapping guide we are appropriately checking for the correct information so that we can create new contacts while only updating existing deals. The rest of your import will work exactly the same. Thank you so much for checking this out. Let me know if you have any questions. Thanks for watching.
