When importing your initial Contact File, if you included a unique Contact ID, you can use this during subsequent imports to merge your datasets together.
In some cases, you might have multiple different types of Contact ID; State, Party, Federal, etc., but the IDs in the files must be the exact same ones.
When uploading a file for merge by this method, you must make sure to include:
Contact ID
First & Last Name
All Address/House information (including Precinct)
Note: If Address/House information is not an exact match, it will be read as a new house; and the contact will be moved accordingly.
You can then include any additional information you wish to be updated or appended to your existing contacts. You may wish to note that:
Any information not referenced in the new dataset will simply remain as it is currently in your database
If a contact has a NULL value for a selected column in the new dataset, a NULL value will not overwrite a value held in the existing dataset
If a contact has conflicting information between the existing database, and new merging dataset, the new data will override the old
If a contact is present in the new dataset, and not in your existing database, they will simply be added as a new contact
If a contact is present in your old dataset, and not in the new, they will be uneffected by the merge
If you have any questions reach out to us in app, or contact support@ecanvasser.com