Automatically importing managers when you import their direct reports

When importing users into Dado from a Google Sheet or Airtable, Dado normally imports one user per row in the Import Source. This means if you wish to import an employee and their manager, your Import Source should contain a row for each of these people.

Dado offers a short-cut as an alternative. If you use this short-cut, you don't need to include a row in the Google Sheet/Airtable for users who will be Supporting Actors to experience Participants. This means you could have just one row in your Import Source that includes details of a new hire, their manager and their buddy; and Dado would create all three users using the data in that row.

If you have Supporting Actor roles where the same user plays that role for all Participants, this shortcut is not suitable for those users. Instead of using this shortcut, import this user in a separate row, as normal.
For instance, you should have a separate row in your Import Source for the employee who is assigned as the ‘IT Team’ Supporting Actor for all the Participants in your Onboarding experience.

Here's how to set up this shortcut. In this example, we'll assume we're setting Dado up to import Managers from the same row as Participants – but the same process applies for any supporting actor. 
There are 2 steps to this process:

1. Create extra field mappings
2. Run an import

1. Create extra field mappings

• Go to the Users tab, and select 'Import Sources' from the left-hand navigation
• Click on the name of the Import Source from which you'll be importing the Supporting Actors. This will display the Field Mappings for this Import Source.

Each set of Field Mappings corresponds to one type of user imported from this Import Source.
In this situation, the default Field Mappings contain the data about Participants. To import Managers from the same rows as the Participants, we'll need to create a second set of Field Mappings that corresponds to the Managers.

• Before you move on to creating the new Field Mapping for the Managers, quickly check that you have mapped the Manager<>Participant relationship correctly in the first set of Field Mappings.
  • In the 'Default Field Mapping' you already see on this page, make sure you have mapped the Manager's email address to Dado's default 'Manager' Field
• Now, create a new Field Mappings Set by clicking on the 'Add Field Mappings set' link at the bottom of the existing Field Mappings.
  
• In this second Field Mapping Set, add the columns from your Google Sheet/Airtable which contain data about the Participants' Managers.
  • For instance, if you want to import the manager's name and their company email address, map these columns to "Full name" and "Work Email"
• Now click 'Save Changes' at the bottom of the screen
  

2. Run an import

• Now you've set up your new Field Mappings Set, it's time to run an import.
• Go to the 'User Imports' page, in the 'Users' tab.
• Click the 'Import now' button on the top right of the page.
• If you've set up your field mappings correctly, the 'New Users' tab in the import will show you the Managers taken from Participants' rows in the Import Source, along with the Participants themselves.

What happens if data for the same user appears in multiple rows?

You can set up this 'shortcut' to import Supporting Actors from the same rows as Participants in your Import Source. But what happens if you later add the data for a particular Supporting Actor to a row of their own?

This situation won't cause any problems for Dado, unless the data becomes inconsistent across the two rows. When inconsistencies appear, 

For example, in the spreadsheet below, Harmony Cobell is set up as Mark Scout's manager. Harmony's data appears in row 2, and in the Manager-related fields in row 3.

If we changed Harmony's name in row 3, this would not be imported into Dado, because Dado prioritizes the data in row 2.