Input file specification

Input files for the Data Loader must match the following specification:

Property	Supported options	Notes
Format	Text Comma-separated Value (CSV)	Fields containing commas must be enclosed in double quotes. You can optionally enclose all fields in double quotes
Record termination	Carriage return Line feed (CR LF)	Do not include carriage returns in fields; these are interpreted as end of record markers.
Character encoding	UTF-8	Essential if your data includes Unicode characters beyond the basic ASCII set. UTF-8 (UCS Transformation Format-8 bit) can represent every character in the Unicode character set.
First record	Names of fields contained in the file.	Use the API names for the fields as supplied in the customer-specific mapping templates.
Maximum file size	10,000 records	When uploading larger amounts of data, split the content over two or more files.

Alternative file formats

As alternatives to CSV format, the Data Loader can use input files in the following formats:

• Tab-separated Value (TSV)

• Pipe delimited

As with other character delimited formats, ensure that fields with the delimiting character in the field content are enclosed in double quotes to avoid those characters being interpreted as end of field markers.

Additional guidelines

If you choose to create your own template files rather than using the Sage People Template Generator, make sure that your templates follow these rules:

• Field names must be separated with the field delimiter you are going to use for the data file. Use the same delimiter consistently, do not mix commas, tabs, and pipes.

  Use the correct object prefixes for fields that are not Team Member object fields. This ensures that fields are correctly identified. For example, Start Date and End Date fields exist in multiple objects and must be prefixed Employment Start Date or Salary Start Date for example.

  Dates must be consistently represented in either dd/mm/yyyy or mm/dd/yyyy format. Do not mix formats in a single file. The separator between date components is not important; you can use slash (/), stop (.), hyphen (-), or underscore (_). But the Data Loader expects to find the following format and will fail to load if dates do not comply:

  <2 digits><separator><2 digits><separator><4 digits>

• Microsoft Excel is not ideal as an application for generating the source CSV files because:

  • It has a tendency to corrupt data; for example, leading zeros are truncated from fields by default.

  • Standard Excel Save As... CSV does not produce UTF-8 character encoding.

  You can use an alternative spreadsheet application such as LibreOffice Calc, which enables you to avoid many of the limitations of Excel for CSV preparation.

  However, if you are familiar with the potential problems of Excel and the required workarounds, you can use Excel to template and prepare your source data for uploading:

  1. Save Excel files in CSV format.

  2. Open the CSV files in an application such as Notepad++ or Sublime Text.

  3. Save the files with UTF-8 character encoding.