If you’ve already started on your journey through the Salesforce data management landscape, then you’ll already be acquainted with its power (check our guide on installing Data Loader if not).
Whether you’re a newcomer eager to enhance your data management skills, or you’re a seasoned admin tasked with handling a large influx of user data, Data Loader’s capabilities will be your steadfast ally. In this tutorial, we’ll dive deep into the process of inserting users into your Salesforce environment with ease. This will be super useful whenever you need to add a lot of users in one go. Let’s jump right in!
Prerequisites and Preparation
Before starting, make sure you’ve prepared your CSV file properly. There are a handful of required fields when adding users via Data Loader. Here’s a list:
- Alias
- Username
- First Name
- Last Name
- Locale (LOCALESIDKEY)
- Language (LANGUAGELOCALEKEY)
- Email Encoding (EMAILENCODINGKEY)
- Time Zone (TIMEZONESIDKEY)
- Currency (CURRENCYISOCODE): This will only be required if your org has Multiple Currencies enabled.
- ProfileId: Take note that this is not the profile name, but the 15-character ID from the URL of the profile in the UI.
From the bullet points above, the locale, language, email encoding, time zone, and currency field picklist values do not follow the format of their respective picklist value labels from the UI. That’s a lot – and mistakes on your CSV file can cause the import to fail – so we’ve prepared a cheat sheet below that can help you fill out those parts with ease. Note that this is not the complete list, but it should have the most commonly-used values so far.
Here’s a template you can start with – just download and fill it out!
Once you’re done, the CSV file should look similar to this:
Make sure you have enough user licenses available for the number of users you’re about to insert, since they will all be automatically uploaded as active users! In case you don’t have the licenses ready yet but would like to have the users in your org anyway, you can still proceed by adding an “IsActive” column to your CSV file and setting values to FALSE. These users will be added to the org as inactive users, so you can activate them whenever you’re ready.
Insert the Users
It’s time to add the users to your org. Launch Data Loader and log in. Hit Insert and select the User object.
Choose the final CSV file you created and click Next. Data Loader will analyze your file and you should see whether or not initialization succeeded:
Click OK, and Step 3 will take you to Mapping. The columns in your CSV file will appear as a list:
Click Create or Edit a Map then Auto-Match Fields to Columns. Double check the resulting mappings and go over some that didn’t map successfully. In my case, it’s First Name and RoleID, so I just searched for the correct fields and dragged them over to map them correctly, like so:
Hit Next and specify the location for saving the “error and success” files. Then click Finish.
Verifying Your Results
Once the insertion process is finished, Data Loader will tell you whether or not it was successful.
You can verify what went down through the error and success files that will appear in the location/folder you specified earlier. You should see two new CSV files, one for errors and the other for successes.
Open each file and check its contents. In an ideal scenario, the error file’s table should be empty and the success file should have a complete list of the users you wanted to import.
You can also log in to your Salesforce org and check if the new users now appear under Setup > Users. Try cross-checking the details of inserted users with the original CSV file to ensure accuracy.
Since passwords cannot be imported in Data Loader, you’ll have to do a password reset via the Salesforce UI. Just select the checkbox beside the users’ names and hit Reset Password(s). These users will be notified of their initial login passwords via email, and will be required to enter a new password from their end.
Summary
And that’s it; we’ve broken down the process of adding multiple users via Data Loader – surely you’ll be more at ease the next time you need to accomplish this task! Mastering tools like Data Loader not only saves time and effort, but also promotes efficiency.
Just make sure you prepare your CSV file diligently and ensure all necessary fields are in place and mapped properly. Everything else – from tracking the insertion progress and verifying results, to resetting their passwords – should be second nature after that.
Comments: