Did you know there is a way to upload your contacts without logging into the application or using the API? We call it Direct Import.
Direct Import allows you to post (or send) a file over http without having to interact manually with the contact import forms in the Bronto web application. Why is this so great? Well, without having to do any API programming or much of any setup at all, you can create a system that automatically sends a file with your contacts’ email addresses and any additional information you have, to Bronto.
Using a scheduling utility, such as cron on unix based systems, and an http posting library, such as curl, you can setup a scheduled process to keep your contact data fresh. These are tools that are familiar to most system administrators, so you should be up and running relatively quickly.
Do you have the ability to automatically create exports of your contact data from your local database, but have been logging into Bronto to keep your contact data up to date? Let Direct Import take care of that for you. You’ll always have the most up to date information about your contacts and you’ll only have to set it up once.
So, head on over to the help topics in the application for all of the information and setup options that you’ll need. Less manual work, and fresher data. We hope you’ll like it.
Alex Durzy
Support Engineer at Bronto
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{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
If you happen to be thinking of creating any setup documentation for dummies (those of us who aren’t entirely sure how to set something like this up, but lacking IT resource assistance), us dummies might really be grateful…
Tacy,
Direct Import is one of those features that we highly recommend having development experience in order to use. Given what you said about having limited IT resources though, I would recommend looking at the curl example on the help topic for Direct Import (search for “direct import” in the application and click on Understanding How Direct Import Works). That is the most straight-forward and basic explanation of using curl in the context of this feature. As for setting up cron jobs, those can be a bit more tricky and can be a real headache if you don’t fully understand them. I would consult the documentation linked to in this post and see if you can figure it out.
Creating basic tutorials for using curl and cron would involve making a lot of assumptions and make use of generic parameters. One would have to have an understanding of cron and curl in order to change the parameters to fit their particular environment, so I am not sure how much benefit these examples would provide. That being said, if you can understand the curl portion of the feature, cron just provides you a mechanism to automate the use of curl, so you don’t really need it.
Hello Support Engineers!
I have a ticket going right now that doesn’t seem to be going anywhere.
Searching for “curl” on this form produced one result….so here I am!
Trying to post using curl to an “advanced” form. Utilizing a script we wrote for the “basic” forms, which is currently running on numerous production sites. However, can’t seem to get the submission to take on the “new” forms.
Thinking USER_AGENT header might be an issue, any insight?
Thanks so much in advance!
-Ben