Upload Files

Uploading Files, (CSV's) is one most common ways Unions import data into the system, and there are currently four different areas you can upload data to the system for currently.

• Upload Student File - To upload bulk groups of your students to Union Cloud
• Upload Programme File - To upload a list of courses, course codes, departments, and schools/colleges to Union Cloud
• Upload Member File - To upload members to a group, if for example people paid membership for a Club / Society in cash, and you wanted to add them to Union Cloud
• Upload Club Admins File - If you have run elections separately to Union Cloud, but you want to upload groups of students as admins for certain Clubs / Societies

The first thing we need to say, and is rather important, is that all CSV File uploads, are processed over night, the same day they are uploaded. So long as your upload is complete by around 23:45 on any given night, the file will be processed just after midnight, depending on the size of the files, and how many other unions are also processing large numbers of uploads, the speed at which this is processed will vary.

We recommend that any editing you plan to do of CSV's is done in Excel, and when saving the file type you choose which file type to save, choose comma-delimited, comma separated values file, not the tab-delimited type. It is always worth downloading the CSV template for the for the particular file you wish to upload from the Upload Files section, as this saves coming up with any unnecessary errors.

Upload Student File

Upload Student File Screen

This is the primary, and most common method that Unions use to get data into Union Cloud, a CSV Upload, though there are two other methods of getting the data, one is through allowing manual registration, which you can filter by certain email extensions, for example only allow emails that have .ac.uk endings, or the third method is you can have data added to your site automatically, by a data transfer using SOAP, or JSON (if this is something you'd like to move to your lead Union Cloud contact should speak to us about it).

These files that yo upload make up the majority of your members, and after upload, can all be found in the User Account Details section. Mandatory fields are marked with a red asterisk(*)

For ease of reading this table is formatted vertically, but as seen in the screenshot to the right, and the CSV Template, the file is actually formatted with ID, forename, surname etc... as Row headings.

Field	Example	Format Requirements
id*	501	Example
forename*	John	Example
surname*	Smith	Example
dob*	30/04/1983	Example
gender	male	Example
institution_email*	john.smith@domain.ac.uk	Example
nationality	IND	Example
domicile_country	GBR	Example
fee_status	UK	Example
hall_of_residence	INDLC	Example
programme_id	PRG001	Example
study_type	PGT	Example
programme_level	1	Example
start_date	10/10/2012	Example
end_date*	31/05/2020	Example
record_type*	new	Example
alternate_email_address	abc@email.com	Example
library_card	L12345	Example
department	EL	Example
erasmus	Y	Example
ethnicity	European	Example
finalist	Y	Example
mode_of_study	Full-Time	Example
placement	R	Example
address	101 Road	Example
postcode	SK10 2NZ	Example

Upload Programme File

Upload Programme File Screen

The Programme File, is used to upload a database of all courses at your institution and some details about them, in each Student Record, there is a space to input 'programme_id' this is the relational record which the system matches with 'id' from the Programme File, and uses it to find out all of the information about their course, based on what you upload here [Course Title(programme_name), School Name, Faculty Name, Study Type], this data is used for when you are trying to build demographic reports about your students, based on elections / groups / events, who takes part in these activities for example, but also for a database of course for the Course Rep Lookup tool.

This should ideally be updated at least once a year.

Field	Example	Format Requirements
id*	PRG001	'Unique Programme Identifier' these should each be unique in this sheet, however match up with programme_id in the Student Files.
programme_name*	PRG Name 1	Open Text - This should be the name of the course matching the course code in the previous field
jacs_code	W100	Joint Academic Coding System (JACS) a system for coding courses used to match courses across multiple institutes around the UK, your institution may or may not use these.
school_name	School of Life	Open Text - This should be the School / College / that contains the faculty for the course listed in the first field
faculty_name	Faculty Name 1	Open Text - This should be the Faculty, that contains the course listed in the first field.
study_type	UG	[FE, UG, PG, PGT, PGR, CPD] are the acceptable inputs for this field.
record_type*	New	[new, update] are the acceptable inputs for this field, you should use them to indicate whether you are creating a new item, or updating an existing one.

Upload Member File

Upload Member File Screen

Upload Group Admins File

Upload Group Admins File Screen