Step by step

1. Open the Management menu

   Every page of your office has two drop-down menus in the top-right corner: Actions and Management. Click Management to open it.

2. Click 'Bring in the members' or 'Bring in the people'

   Find the entry labelled 'Bring in the members' (used for lodges and schools) or 'Bring in the people' (used for all other organisation types) and click it. Daviah takes you to the import screen.

3. The screen loads

   The import screen shows a heading — 'Bring in the members' or the equivalent for your organisation type — along with a short explanation. A hint beneath the file field names the columns your CSV may contain. If your organisation keeps degree records — such as a lodge — the hint will include initiation, passing, and raising date columns.

4. Choose your CSV file and click 'Read the file'

   Use the file field to select your spreadsheet saved as a CSV. When you click 'Read the file', Daviah reads the file on the server, checks your role, maps each column header to a known field, and validates every row — checking that names are present, emails are properly formed, and membership numbers and email addresses are not already on your roll or repeated within the file itself. Nothing is saved yet.

5. Review the preview

   Daviah shows you how many rows were read and how many are ready to import, how each column in your file was matched to a field, a sample of the first five valid rows, any rows it could not read along with the reason for each, and any rows that are already on your roll. If there are problem rows and you have not opted to skip them, the confirm button is disabled — you cannot proceed until you either fix the file or tick the skip option.

6. Optionally tick 'Bring in the N that can be read, and leave the rest for me to correct'

   If any rows have errors or are duplicates, a checkbox appears offering to skip those rows and import only the valid ones. The label shows the exact count of rows that can be read. Ticking it enables the confirm button and updates it to show the exact number of members that will be created. Leave the box unticked if you want to fix the file and start over instead.

7. Click 'Bring in N members' to confirm the import

   Clicking the confirm button sends the validated CSV to the server. Daviah re-runs all the same checks so nothing can be bypassed, then creates one member record for each valid row. If your organisation keeps degree records, it also creates individual degree-record documents for any initiation, passing, or raising dates that were present in the CSV.

8. Import record and audit event are written

   As part of the same action that creates the member records, Daviah saves a summary to your imports log — recording the filename, how many rows were created, how many were skipped, how many had errors, and who ran the import. It also writes an audit event marked 'members.imported' so there is a permanent record of when this happened and under whose account. This all happens server-side; there is nothing extra for you to do.

9. Read the confirmation message

   The screen reloads and shows a status notice at the top — for example, '47 members brought in' or '44 members brought in, 3 skipped'. If the import was refused because problem rows were present and you did not choose to skip them, a red notice explains how many rows failed and asks you to correct the file before trying again.

What happens next

New member records are created in your members collection for every valid row in the file. If your organisation keeps degree records, the initiation, passing, and raising dates from the CSV are written as separate degree-record documents, each linked to the new member they belong to.

A summary record is saved in your imports collection and an audit event is logged against your account. You can refer to these later to see exactly what was brought in, when, and by whom.

Good to know

Daviah maps your column headers to known fields automatically, so your spreadsheet does not need to use exact names. Common variations such as 'membernumber', 'memberno', and 'id' are all recognised as the membership number field. Check the column mapping shown in the preview to confirm Daviah has read your headers as you expected.

The duplicate check runs against both your existing members and other rows within the same file, using membership number and email address. If the same person appears twice in your CSV — or is already on your roll — both copies are flagged. You can skip them and import the rest, or fix the file and upload it again.