Overview

The Mainstay platform allows communication between an AI-powered chat bot / human "Live Chat" and external contacts. There are a number of ways to upload contacts into the platform:

• individual contact creation
• manual CSV upload on the Contacts tool
• manual CSV upload for a specific Campaign
• automated CSV upload via SFTP (See Mainstay Sync for SFTP)
• REST API (See the API documentation)
• platform integration (See Mainstay Sync for Salesforce or Platform Integrations)

Create an Individual Contact

1. Navigate to the Contact tool in the navigation bar. (See Navigating the Contacts Page.)
2. In the top-right corner, click the Add Contact button.
   • 
3. On the right-side, the Contact panel will appear, with no values set for any field. Enter the desired values for each field and click Save to finish. For more information on using the Contact panel, see Contact Panel.

Upload a CSV in the Contacts tool

1. As above, navigate to the Contacts tool.
2. In the top-right corner, click the Import Contacts button.
   
   • 
3. The contacts table will disappear. The importer tool will appear instead: drag a CSV file onto this area to begin.
   • 
4. You will see a preview (first 10 rows) of the file you uploaded, as well as the columns. Use the drop-down menus to select a contact field for each column you wish to import.
   • Note that Phone, First Name, and Last Name are required columns, but it's okay if a contact does not have values for these.
     • Adding a Phone to an existing web-chat contact will transform it into a multi-channel contact.
   • One of these fields may be used as the unique identifier for matching to existing contacts:
     
     • If Mainstay (AdmitHub) ID is mapped and a contact has a value for it, then this will be used as the unique identifier for matching. If the Mainstay (AdmitHub) ID for this row does not match to any existing contacts, that row will be skipped.
     • Otherwise, if CRM ID is mapped and a contact has a value for it, then this will be used as the unique identifier for matching. If the CRM ID for this row does not match to any existing contacts, a new contact will be created.
     • Otherwise, Phone will be used as the unique identifier for matching. If the Phone Number for this row does not match to any existing contacts, a new contact will be created. (Note: If this row also contains a CRM ID that differs from the matching contact's CRM ID, this row will be skipped to prevent an errant CRM ID update.)
5. The drop-down menus are searchable, and include both standard fields and custom fields. Begin typing to see a subset of fields that include your search text.
   • 
   • Note: the Preferred Name field can only be set for a new contact or if it is currently null/blank for an existing contact. This prevents overwriting someone's preferred name if it was set using the #changename command.
   • Note: You can map to channel-specific Messaging Status fields to opt a contact out of receiving messages via that channel. To opt a contact in, you must manually edit the individual contact.
   • Archived and Permitted are opposites; if a contact is archived, then Archived would be TRUE and Permitted would be FALSE. For your convenience, either option is selectable, but you cannot use both to update the same contact, as that could lead to a conflict.
6. If you type the name of a field that does not exist, you will see the option to create a new custom field.
   • 
7. When you have mapped all the fields you wish to import, click Next in the top-right corner.
8. On the Label and Finalize Upload screen, you can change the name of the CSV file that Mainstay will store in the Import History. You can also add existing and/or new labels to all contacts in this import. (See Label Manager for more information.)
   
   • 
9. After clicking Import in the top-right corner, you will see a loading screen. Depending on the size of the CSV file, it may take several minutes to import your contacts.
   • Note: if another user is currently importing a file, you will not be able to start another import.
   • 
10. When the import has completed, you will see an import report. This includes the number of contacts created and updated, the automatically generated import label, and a review of the column mapping. You will also see a list of row-specific errors, if applicable.
    • 
11. After clicking Done, you will be taken to the Import History page. This shows a list of previous CSV uploads, including the name of the file, the date and time of import, custom labels applied during the import, the number of contacts imported, and the person who imported the file. 
    • 
12. Click on an individual entry to review details, including:
    • The date and time of the upload, and the person who uploaded the file.
    • The original name of the file and a link to download the original file.
    • The summary, including the number of contacts in the file; the number of contacts imported, created, updated, and with phone updates; and the number of errors encountered.
    • The list of contact labels applied.
    • The selected field mapping of CSV columns to Mainstay fields.
    • The detailed list of errors.
    • A link to download a file containing only those contacts with errors, as well as the error details and their original row number.
    • 

Upload a CSV in the Campaign tool

1. Navigate to the Campaigns tool from the navigation bar. (See Campaigns Page.)
2. Click + New Campaign to create a Campaign.
3. On the Choose Recipients step, select Upload Recipients from a CSV file and click Continue.
4. On the next screen, drag a CSV file into the designated area to begin the Import process.
5. From this point forward, the Import modal will appear and function the same as on the Contacts tool. Refer to the process outlined above, starting from Step 5.

Tips

• To see the full list of standard contact fields, visit Standard Contact Fields (Data Dictionary).
• If you encounter data validation errors while importing contact records, visit the Import Error Dictionary to better understand next steps.
• To archive contacts, map to the Permitted User field and set the value to false.
  • If a contact record is Archived, and Permitted User: false is not present in the import, then reimporting that contact via CSV upload or platform integration will un-archive the contact.
• To opt out contacts, map to the Can Text field and set the value to false.
• If the value for a field is blank or null, it will be skipped for that contact during imports.
• Like the Mainstay API and platform integrations, CSV uploading does support clearing the value of all custom fields and the following default fields. Set the field to UNSET (all capitals) and the value will be cleared out.
  • First Name
  • Last Name
  • Preferred Name
  • Phone
  • Email
  • Enrollment ID
  • CRM ID
• When uploading a value to a Boolean (true/false) field, the following values, in any capitalization, are accepted:
  • "y", "yes", "true", "t", "1" → map to true
  • "n", "no", "false", "f", "0" → map to false