Importing interactions & tasks

Interaction history is what makes Out of Touch Donors, Unthanked Donors, and What’s Next meaningful from day one instead of six months in.

Required columns

Contact Organization ID
Type

Plus, in practice, a title and a date.

Preparing the file

Columns: Donor ID, interaction title, interaction type, and date of interaction.

Normalise the types before importing. Karani’s interaction types are: note, ask, thank you, email, facebook, mail, text, call, voicemail, meeting, service. If your source uses “Phone” and “Phone Call” and “Called”, map them all to call in the spreadsheet first.

Running the import

Import → Interactions/Tasks.
Choose your file and Submit.
Map the columns.
Process CSV.

The fields

Karani field	Notes
Contact Organization ID	Required. How the record finds its contact.
Type	Required.
Title	What happened.
Notes	Any detail.
Interaction Date	For things that happened.
Is Task? (Y/N)	Y makes it a task rather than an interaction.
Date Due (Tasks)	For tasks.
Is Completed? (Tasks)	For tasks that are already done.

Interactions vs. tasks in one file

The Is Task? column lets one file contain both. Past history imports as interactions (N); anything outstanding imports as tasks (Y) with a due date.

Most historical imports are all interactions, and you can leave the column out entirely.

After the import

Open a few contact profiles and check the Communication Timeline.
Check Interaction History for the overall count and date spread.
Run Out of Touch Donors — it should now be a realistic list rather than everyone you have.

Going forward

Once history is in, keep it current by logging interactions as you go, and by bulk-logging every mailing. That’s the habit the reports depend on.