To import employees into the system, you need to fill out a template with information about your company's employees. Filling in the template for importing employees will help you save time and avoid mistakes when entering data manually.
We recommend including as much information as possible about your employees, including their managers, in the template to properly reflect the company's organizational structure.
💡 You can download the file (template) here in the .csv and .xlsx. formats.
System fields and how to fill them in
Import in the PeopleForce system supports two file types - .csv and .xlsx. Before uploading a table to the system, you need to fill in all the fields correctly. You can find an example of how to fill in the fields below:
Mandatory fields are bold:
employee_id - Employee ID (The ID of the employee can be his employee number at the company or a sequence number in this document).
first_name - Employee first name
middle_name - Employee middle name
last_name - Employee last name
email - Working email
personal_email - Personal email
date_of_birth - Date of birth
gender - Gender
hired_on - Hiring date
phone_number - Work phone number
mobile_number - Personal phone number
employment_type - Type of employment
position - Position
department - Department
division - Division
location - Location
facebook_url - Facebook profile
linkedin_url - LinkedIn profile
twitter_username - Twitter username
skype_username - Skype username
slack_username - Slack username
skills - Skills
reporting_to_employee_id - Manager’s ID (Enter the employee's manager ID so that the manager can be displayed in the company's organizational structure)
salary_amount - Salary amount
salary_currency_code - Currency
salary_effective_on - Salary effective date
salary_frequency - Payment frequency ( hour, day, week, month, year )
access - Access to system (For system administrators, we specify a value of 1 to gain access to the system. For all other users we give them a value of 0, which means that access is currently disabled for them. They can be granted access later by sending an invitation to their email).
ldap_username - LDAP username. It is used only if the LDAP is activated. Find more information about alternative ways to access the system here.
💡 Please note that when you import employees, make sure that the imported data has the correct format of: date (01.01.2021), phone number (+380), full name, email address. All fields are validated by the system.
The current date format can be found in Settings -> General. When you make an import, the imported dates have to correspond to the current date format in your account.
Custom fields
Custom fields are additional fields in employee cards that you can create in the system to store certain information about an employee. Examples of custom fields in an employee profile can include:
Education
Work experience
Address
Post code
Social Security Number
Marital status
Hobby
In order to create new employee fields that are specific to your company, go to Settings -> PeopleHR -> Employee fields.
After adding custom fields in the settings, transfer their names to the import template. The system will automatically pull the data from these fields in the template into the custom fields in the system.
It is important to mention that when a spreadsheet is saved, you have to select the comma as the delimiter.
Importing data into the system
To start importing employees into the system, go to Settings -> General -> Import.
If you can’t find the ‘Settings’ and the ‘Import’, this is very likely that you don’t have access to it. 🔒 If that’s the case, then address this issue to your system administrator.
From the dropdown menu select Employees, select the type of data you want to import, find the desired file, upload it to the system and click Next.
Once the spreadsheet is uploaded, you can verify if all fields were imported properly. If some fields were not automatically recognized by the system, make sure their names are correct, or specify the correct field manually.
The system supports automatic validation of imported data. If the imported data has incorrect format, it will be colored in red.
If you made a mistake when entering data, you need to correct the wrong values in the file and re-import the data. The duplicates will remain with the same data, and the incorrect lines will be updated.
Users can view the history of all uploaded files within the Import menu. Furthermore, the system provides important details on this page such as the number of imported or updated employees, and also the number of errors.
You can also open the journal and view detailed information about import errors.
Update employee profiles
If you need to update one or more employee profiles, you can also use the import functionality. All employee profiles are linked to the system by their ID or email.
So when you import new data, you have to double check if the uploaded employee IDs correspond to their actual system IDs. If an employee ID doesn't match, then a duplicate employee record will be created within the system. In case the import is successful, then the current profile data will get updated.
It is important to know that if you import departments, then subsidiaries won’t be lined up automatically. After the data gets imported, you have to set up your department's structure manually.
FAQ
1. How can I add the Address, Post code, Street fields, and other custom fields to the employee profile in PeopleForce?
To add the Address, Post code, and Street fields to the employee profile in PeopleForce, you can create custom fields. Here's how you can do it:
Go to the Settings section in PeopleForce.
Find and select "Employee Fields".
Create a new field for each of the desired fields, such as "Address," "Post code," and "Street."
Save the custom fields settings.
After adding custom fields in the settings, transfer their names to the import template. The system will automatically pull the data from these fields in the template into the custom fields in the system.
2. If I fill the "access" field with "1" in the employee import file, does that automatically send a notification/invitation to those employees to access PeopleForce?
No, filling the "access" field with "1" in the employee import file does not automatically send a notification or invitation to the employees. It simply grants them access to the system. You would need to send a separate invitation to the employees to grant them access to PeopleForce.
