This article covers bulk importing Departments from a file, either as a one-time import or on a scheduled basis. Review Data Imports for general information about importing data into Absorb.

Departments are the primary way Users are categorized in Absorb. Each User must belong to a single Department. Departments can also be nested by assigning parent Departments, creating a hierarchy tree. For more information about general Department setup, see Department Creation & Management. For the purposes of this article, it is assumed you are already familiar with setting up Departments manually in Absorb through the admin portal.

Quick Start

There are several options available for processing Departments. The following are the minimum inputs required to set up this import:

• Sample file (see Prepare the File below)
• Column mappings
• Unique identifier
• Fallback Parent Department

Prepare the File

Download the most recent Absorb Data Mapping Excel document (click here). Refer to the Users tab for a list of fields that can be included, including the minimum required fields and any dependencies.

Configuration

In addition to the generic configuration options available to all modules, the following configuration options are available for Users (mandatory options are marked with *).

Column Mapping

The Data Imports - Configuration article covers column mapping in general. You must specify which Absorb fields should be mapped to each column in the file based on column headers (for example, the column with header “EID” should be mapped to the External ID field). The following fields/columns are mandatory for Departments:

• Name
• ExternalID (only if used as the unique identifier, which is strongly recommended)
• Parent_ExternalID

Processing

This section describes processing options that affect how existing Department records are matched and how parent departments are assigned when import data is incomplete or invalid.

Unique Identifier

This property uniquely identifies the record for the purpose of updating existing records (the key). Options available:

• External ID (recommended)
• Name

Absorb does not enforce uniqueness on either of these fields. The Name field is displayed in various reports, so it can be harder to maintain uniqueness. The External ID can be used to store a less human-readable value such as a numerical or alphanumeric ID.

Fallback Parent Department

This setting specifies the Department to use as the parent when the parent defined in the import file is missing or invalid. Keep your admin permissions in mind; it can be safest to fall back to a parent department near the bottom of your hierarchy to avoid inadvertently granting admin permissions over a large portion of your department tree. Options available:

• Specific Department external ID
• Specific Department name (must be unique)
• Top Level Department

A typical Department file includes a single Department record with no parent defined, where the unique identifier matches the existing very top level Department in Absorb. Each Absorb Portal comes preloaded with a single top level Department, but you may need to manually edit its External ID or Name to match the record in your file. When the integration runs, it matches to the existing top level Department.

Another option is to omit that top level Department from your file and only provide records with parents. This (safely) assumes the very top level Department already exists. However, you must still manually edit its External ID or Name in Absorb so it can be used as the parent for other Departments in your file.

If you provide additional records with no parent, and their unique identifier does not match the existing top level Department, they are assigned the Fallback Parent Department.

Related Objects

The following objects are often imported alongside Departments:

• Users
• Department Admins

Refer to Absorb Data Mapping for more information about the objects above.

Data Examples

This section provides examples of a typical Departments import file format.

Spreadsheet

The following screenshot shows an example spreadsheet layout for a Departments import.

Text

The following example shows the same data in a text (CSV) format.

Name,ExternalId,Parent_ExternalId
Demo Organization,00001,
Sales,00002,00001
Support,00003,00001
Human Resources,00004,00001
North America Sales,00005,00002
European Sales,00006,00002