Overview
This section allows you to set up automatic delivery of a CSV list containing new records, so you can rapidly update your employee details at regular times.
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Click the 'Shift Employee' link in 'Company Setup > StaffMatch' to open the 'Shift Employee Summary' screen (also accessible via 'StaffMatch' tab drop-down menu).
Click 'Auto-Import' in title bar to open the 'Employee Auto Import Summary' screen.
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Description
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Summary
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Click an Auto-List name to view details.
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Change details.
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Delete permanently from the system.
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Create .csv File
Before you can import employees, you must create a .csv file in Excel which contains all the required information.
Open Excel, and add employee information according to the following format:
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There must be no more than one value per cell. Each row represents one employee; each column represents a field in a new employee record in AT&T GSMS. Include all mandatory information, and any optional information. Mandatory fields are marked with a red asterisk *.
Any of these values can be included as a column in your .csv file.
General Information
First Name
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First, or given, name.
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Last Name
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Surname, or family name.
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Phone
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A mobile or landline phone number. This is a secondary or alternative number which is stored, but not used, by AT&T GSMS.
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Fax
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Optional fax machine number.
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Mobile
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Primary mobile number in international format.
If this field is not accessible (i.e. greyed-out), it means the employee is also a AT&T GSMS user, and you cannot alter their pre-existing details from here.
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Driver's License
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Optional driver's license number.
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Alias
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A nickname or alternate name (e.g. if name is 'Edward Wood Jr', nickname might be 'Junior').
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Primary email address.
If this field is not accessible (i.e. greyed-out), it means the employee is also a AT&T GSMS user, and you cannot alter their pre-existing details from here.
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Language
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The employee's first, or preferred, language.
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Number Plate
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Optional vehicle license plate number.
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Mailing Address
Street/Suburb
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The physical street address for correspondence (e.g. 100 Walker Street, North Sydney).
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City
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The city or town of residence (e.g. Sydney, New York, London).
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Zip/Postal Code
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Mailing zone number or code for the state (e.g. 2060, CA).
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Employee Information
Employee Number
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Optional employee identifier.
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Title
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Employee's professional title.
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Zip/Postal Code
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Mailing zone number or code for the state (e.g. 2060, CA).
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Priority
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Indicates employee preference level (e.g. priority '1' employees are preferable to priority '2', etc).
You can view the priority number of employees when creating a shift order. This allows you to create a basic hierarchy of employees based on criteria like performance, reliability, skills, education etc.
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Minimum Shift Hours
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The shortest amount of time, in hours, that the employee is willing to work at a time (e.g. 4).
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Maximum Shift Hours
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The longest amount of time, in hours, that the employee is willing to work at a time (e.g. 8).
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Employment Type
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This indicates the category of work the employee is interested in.
Options are:
•Casual
•Full Time
•Part Time
•Permanent Part Time
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Department
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Select from the list. The employee is eligible to work within any of the chosen departments.
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Cost Center ID
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An optional identifier if the employee is linked to a particular cost center.
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Cost Label
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An optional identifier if the employee is linked to a particular cost center.
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Hourly Rate
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The amount an employee is required to be paid.
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Minimum Week Hours
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The shortest amount of time, in hours, that the employee is willing to work within any given week (e.g. 100, 200).
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Maximum Week Hours
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The longest amount of time, in hours, that the employee is willing to work within any given week (e.g. 150, 200, 210).
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Once you have typed/pasted all the employee information you want to import, save the spreadsheet as a CSV file type, and move it onto the server where it will be retrieved from.
Set Up Automatic List
Data can be scheduled to be automatically uploaded from an external FTP site (automatic lists). These uploads can be scheduled to occur at specific times or on a recurring basis.
Please note that you must provide and maintain your own FTP server to receive or provide files.
Upload list type's Retention Policy can be scheduled by users and determines how long the lists are retained within the system. The available choices are 'NONE', 'DELETE AFTER USAGE', '7 DAYS', '14 DAYS', '30 DAYS' or '90 DAYS'. The default Retention Policy value is '30 Days'. Users can modify the retention policy per List, as per their specific needs.
When AUTOMATIC list is processed by SMS Broadcast order, email is sent to the notification list configured under SMS Company Preference page. The email contains information of total recipients, total sent and total discarded.
As a user creating a list, you can add a launch date time stamp for the message to be sent using the column header 'launchTimestamp'. This can be used when the list method is TEXT or UPLOAD or AUTOMATIC or AUTOMATIC_API and File/Content Starts with HEADER LINE.
<destination,firstName,launchTimestamp>
For Example ; 447545430377,Mike,2020-06-11T07:00:00.00+01:00.
The format for the Timestamp element is <YYYY-MMDDThh:mm:ss.sTZD>.
The List can also have a recurring delivery schedule mentioned within the List's Columns. When creating a list the header line can optionally contain a 'recurrence' field e.g. destination,firstname,recurrence.
For list items you can optionally set the recurrence to daily, weekly, monthly or yearly (case insensitive) 447545439377,Mike,yearly.
Note: If the list item has 'launchTimestamp' set, the recurrence interval should be relative to the 'launchTimestamp'.
For Example; launchTimestamp = 20th June 2020 and recurrence = Yearly then the recurrence will be 20th June 2021.
If the list item doesn't have 'launchTimestamp' set, the message will be sent immediately and the recurrence will be relative to the date/time the message was sent.
Users can add short URLs to their Broadcast Orders by adding the URL to their list item under the column name 'ShortURL'.
Create a list with a header field 'ShortURL' and add a list item under the field ShortURL :
Format: destination,firstName,ShortURL
For Example ; 447545430377,Mike,www.sopranodesign.com
Users can enter a valid source address as a column entry in the format displayed in the below Example.
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Method
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Select 'AUTOMATIC' from the drop-down menu.
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Retrieval Frequency
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Select the interval at which the list data will be retrieved from the external FTP site:
•DAILY
•FORTNIGHTLY
•HOURLY
•IMMEDIATELY
•MONTHLY
•ONCE
•WEEKDAY
•WEEKEND
•WEEKLY
•EVERY 5 MINUTES
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URL
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Type/paste location URL for the external site where the file will be retrieved from. Alternatively, files can be delivered toward an internal server by AT&T.
Broadcast messages can be automatically triggered whenever lists are retrieved/delivered by setting 'TRIGGER' as the 'Delivery Frequency' when sending a new SMS Broadcast. |
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If an auto-list fails due to an invalid or corrupted file type, an error notification will be sent to a specified email address containing the following text:
'The automatic list '$Automaticlistname' attempted to retrieve the file '$Filename' at $date $time. This file does not appear to be in a plain text 'Comma Separated Value' (CSV) format and it has been rejected on this basis.
Automatic lists only support plain text 'Comma Separated Value' (CSV) format. Please check that the file mentioned above has been correctly saved in this format before making it available for future collections.' |
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If data within one or more rows is considered to be invalid, an email notification will also be sent to the user. To determine whether a single row in a list is invalid, we look at the the following rules:
•If the first field has alpha characters and numbers, we will remove non-numeric numbers and attempt to treat as a mobile number before determining if there is an error. Example: if first CSV field is '12912345678ABC', we will trim the 'ABC' and treat this as a mobile number '12912345678'.
•If the first field contains a TAB we will treat this row as being invalid.
•Check to see if the overall length of the string for the number is <= 15 characters.
•Remove whitespace, -, (, ), \, + from the mobile number.
•Expect that the mobile number is all digits, and contains at least one digit.
•If the row is just commas (no data) we will not send an error, and the row will be treated as an empty line
•If the first CSV field is less than 9 characters (after trimming carriage returns), we will treat this as an invalid line
•If the file is detected to be a PDF, JPG, GIF, Open Office document or MS Office Document then the file would be considered invalid.
•If there is no valid mobile number in the first value of the list. |
Username
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The FTP username credentials.
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Start Date
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The date when file retrieval should commence. Click
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Source File Encoding
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Select from the drop-down menu (leave as default unless you wish to display foreign characters):
•Big5
•Big5-HKSCS
•GB18030
•GB2312
•GBK
•ISO-8859-1
•ISO-8859-11 Thai
•ISO-8859-2
•ISO-8859-3
•ISO-8859-4
•ISO-8859-5 Cyrillic
•ISO-8859-6 Arabic
•ISO-8859-7 Greek
•ISO-8859-8 Hebrew
•ISO-8859-9
•US-ASCII
•UTF-16
•UTF-8
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Protocol
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Select from the drop-down menu:
•FTP
•SFTP
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File Name
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The name of the file to retrieve. You can type {date} within the file name and it will be replaced by today's date - e.g. {yyyyMMdd} for daily or {yyyyMMddHH} for 'Hourly'.
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Password
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The FTP password credentials.
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Start Time
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The time when file retrieval should commence.
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Rename Once Collected
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Click check box to indicate that you would like the file to be renamed and appended with the '.COLLECTED' extension after retrieval.
Note: If this feature is selected and the FTP user does not have sufficient write access to the FTP server path, the list retrieval will fail.
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Ignore Duplicated Files |
Click check-box to compare the time-stamp of the new file to the last uploaded file with identical names. |
icon to select a date.Suppress Email Notifications |
Check this box if you do not want to receive email notifications when no remote file available and/or retrieval fails. |
Notification List |
Contains the list of people who would receive notifications once the SFTP file processing has completed. |
File Starts With |
Choose "Header Line" to indicate if the first row of the sheet is a header (for example, Column name) or choose none if not applicable. |
Destination Column |
Indicates which column contains the recipient's destination details. |
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Once a list has been saved, the 'Method' and 'Retrieval Frequency' fields cannot be changed. The list must be cloned to allow this action. |
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If the file does not exist on the server the Automatic FTP process will retry the retrieval every 5 minutes for up to an hour. If the file is still not available no list will be created for the period and an email will be sent to whomever last modified the List order notifying them of the event.
Email Content will be something like:
The system has tried to retrieve the file [Name=FILE_NAME] from FTP [FTP_URL] for automatic list [ID=LIST_ID, Name=LIST_NAME every 5 minutes for a period up to X minutes but failed. Please check auto list configuration.
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If more than one FTP file is located, both files will be retrieved, and each will generate a list.
If the file transfer fails, the incomplete file will be discarded and no list will be generated.
The above is also dependent on your 'Retrieval Frequency' selection:
•IMMEDIATE - No retry •5 MINUTES - No retry. The system will continue to poll for files at the next interval. |
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If the file retrieval is successful:
•The file content will be stored into persistent storage (list created) then it will inspect the content for processing.
•During inspection of content, if any line was found not to contain a valid mobile number, this line will be skipped. All skipped lines will be collected and an email will be triggered to the order owner listing the entries in the file that were skipped and not included in the broadcast. |
Employee Auto Import Details
Once you've created your .csv file and placed it on an external server, you can choose when and how employee details are updated.
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List Name
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The name of the automatic list
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Delivery Frequency
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How often the list is delivered (e.g. DAILY, WEEKLY)
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Status
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Whether the list is currently active or inactive.
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Update Option
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FULL - Any existing employee details will be removed and completely replaced by the contents of the list each time it is delivered.
DELTA - Any existing employee details will be retained and only new records will be added each time the list is delivered.
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Start Date
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The automatic list will begin being delivered on this date.
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Start Time
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Date and time the list is/was first delivered.
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Store changes and exit
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Undo any changes and exit. |
