Purpose |
This feature is suitable if you have a large number of future bookings to make, say, a roster of patient home visits. Please note that the Bulk Booking Upload can create bookings for drivers who don't exist already in the system. That's why it's required to have Driver Name, Phone Number and Cost Centre code. If your organisation isn’t using Cost Centres, use a generic name like FLEET All fields are mandatory apart from Driver Project/Fund Code Custom Fields must be added into PoolCar before they can be imported against a booking - see below under Custom Fields |
You first need to download the below .csv template then populate this template with your booking data. |
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How To |
Download the Booking Import Template (link above). Populate with your data. In Excel, select File > 'Save As' selecting the CSV file type. In PoolCar, go to Sysadmin > Main Menu. Under Uploaders Click 'Bulk Import Bookings' Follow the instructions on page, selecting the CSV file you saved in step 3 above. Click 'Upload' and once your file is processed, the results will be displayed on screen.
With your data file, here are some Do's and Don’ts. |
Do… |
Keep the header row intact. This is needed for the file importer to work correctly. You can remove the ‘Custom Fields’ columns but keep everything else the same. In Excel, File > 'Save As' CSV file type In the 'Send Receipt' column, enter either "Y" or "Yes" or "N" or "No". Upper/lowercase does not matter.
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Don’t… |
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Custom Fields |
If you have Custom Fields configured for your booking form, you can import this data too. Note in the Excel template there are columns for Custom Fields. Space is provided for three custom fields, but if you have more than this, simply create new columns being sure to also have corresponding Custom Field Number in the header row. The sequence is important. Where you have Custom Fields defined, they have a sequence number - 1, 2, 3, etc. Field with sequence number one should be the first Custom Field column in Excel, sequence no. 2 should be the second column, etc. In other words, the importer will map column "K" of the template to Custom Field sequence field no.1, column "L" would be sequence 2, and so on.
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Some things to look out for |
If the system setting is enabled to source all cost centres (and project codes) from the reference table, then the importer will reject rows where the cost centre code is not valid. Ditto for project codes. The rationale here is that if the system admin has enabled this setting - presumably to stop 'junk' codes entering the system - then the importer should also abide by this decision. The importer will reject any rows where the reservation start date is earlier than the current time. This is to prevent retrospective bookings entering the system and possibly corrupting utilisation figures. If a booking is not created, it will be displayed in the Booking Upload page with the line number and the reason why it is rejected. e.g. "Booking Email is blank or empty" or "No description provided" If the system setting is enabled to force a minimum number of characters in the Description field, rows may be rejected if the Description is too short. Again this is to preserve data quality. If the system is configured, prior to the upload occurring, to hide the Purpose/Destination field, just put "N/A" in the Excel column. Don't delete this column, just put N/A in this field and it will be ignored.
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