Import Contact List

Introduction

Using Engati’s import contacts list feature you can import up to 50k contacts based on the entitlement. This feature would only be visible if the bot is deployed on the WhatsApp channel. Using this feature, You can easily send broadcasts to over 50k users in one go.

How is a Contact different from a User?

A user on Engati is a counterparty whose conversation is being tracked on the platform. There would be at least one incoming message from the counter party.

A contact on the other hand is a potential future “Users”, who customers can send messages to. These conversations would be tracked once the contact responds to messages and initiates a conversation.

Setup

1. Deploy your bot on the WhatsApp channel.



2. Once the bot is deployed the import contact list icon would be visible on the left side.



3. Navigate to Contacts>Import Contact List



4. Contact List format

• Only mandatory column in a Contact List is phone_no which will include the phone numbers of the contacts (your target audience).
• Other columns that can be included are first_name, last_name, email, username, city, state and country
• A header row will always be present
• Without a header row, an error would occur while uploading
• Validation would be performed for phone_no and other mentioned columns above - so if an incorrect email is entered in email column, then an error would occur

5. Additional attributes in the contact list

• In addition to the column headers above, additional attributes can be included and used in the contact list by using a header in format attribute_name||TYPE where TYPE can be TEXT, NUMBER, BOOLEAN, DATE, TIME.
• If TYPE is not included, then default TYPE is TEXT
• For example, the header can be amount_paid||NUMBER.



6. Import Contact List



Here you get two options:

1. Single Country
2. Multiple Countries

Single Country :

• Country: The selected country’s code will automatically attach to the uploaded contact list. (e.g: India - +91)
• Upload Contact List: You can upload the ‘xlsx or CSV’ format file containing up to 50k contacts. The default limit would be 10k.

Note: Make sure you don’t manually add a country code of some other country to any of the numbers in the datasheet. Otherwise, the number would be counted in the error count. If there are numbers with a country code of the selected country, then those numbers would be processed as is without adding another country code in front.

• Contact List Name: Give a name to your uploaded contact list log.

Multiple Countries :

• Upload Contact List: The uploaded contacts will not get auto-formatted. You will need to upload the contact list with the respective country code. (e.g: 91 - country code for India and the Number is 98765432. Then put the number as 9198765432)
• Contact List Name: Give a name to your uploaded contact list log.

Once the contact list is uploaded, it would be visible under the ‘Contact List’ section.

Under the ‘Export History’ section, you would see the logs of the downloaded contact lists.

Under the ‘Import History’ section you would be able to see the File Name, Requested Time, Completed Time, Total Records, Error Count, and Status.



• Requested Time: The time at which you uploaded the contact list file.
• Completed Time: The time at which the list got uploaded successfully.
• Total Records: Number of total contacts in the uploaded file.
• Error Count: The number on which WhatsApp is not enabled or if it’s a Wrong formatted number, will get counted as an Error Count.
• Status: The upload status of your file would be displayed.

Run Broadcast

In the Import contact list option, you get a direct button for running broadcast.



By clicking on the ‘Run Broadcast’ button it will redirect to the ‘Create New Broadcast’ window.



Select the user group as ‘Contact List’ and select the target contact list from the dropdown menu.



You get the option of adding the contact list directly while creating a new broadcast.



A similar panel you would see after clicking on the ‘Import contact list’ button.



Using Custom Attributes

• The custom attributes included in the contact list can be used to persozalize the content of the template
• For example, if amount_paid||NUMBER is specified as a header, then this value can be used in the template by using {{amount_paid}} from the list of attributes at the apporpriate place in the template





This is how you can import the contact list and perform broadcasting.