Importing entries with Zapier

Thanks to a direct integration with Zapier, importing entries into your Award Force account has never been easier! To import your entries, you'll need a few things:

• An Award Force account on the Pro subscription level or higher
• A Zapier account (the Zapier plan you need will depend on the number of entries you wish to import)
• A Google Sheet containing the historical data you want to import

To get started, follow these steps:

Step 1: prepare your Google Sheet

Setting up the entry form in Award Force and preparing your Google Sheet will be the most time-consuming step in this process. You'll need to ensure that every piece of information you've collected outside of the platform is represented with its own unique field in Award Force. For example, if you ask for an entrant's employer, you will need to create a field in Award Force asking for that same information. 

The Google Sheet you create will need to contain a row for each entry and, as a minimum, you will need to provide Award Force with the entrant slug, category slug, chapter slug, season slug, and the entry title. Please see our dedicated guide, What is a slug?, for more information. Any additional entry fields you wish to import will also need to be created in Award Force first and then these slugs added to the Google Sheet.

Your external applicants can be imported into the platform in just a few steps outlined here: Adding users.  

If you want to upload files you'll need to provide the URLs for the files as a column in the Google Sheet. For this tutorial we're going to import one single file upload field for each entry.

Here's an example spreadsheet we've prepared so you can see the format.

Step 2: create an API key in Award Force

In order to properly connect your Award Force account with Zapier and import entry data, you will need to create an API key. Here's how:

1. In the Manage workspace, navigate to Settings > Integrations > API keys
2. Click Generate API key
3. Give the key a name and select Read / Write under 'Scope'
   
4. Save

Step 3: use the provided 'create new' entries Zapier template

1. Go to Settings > Integrations > Zapier
2. Choose Google Sheets under the 'with this one!' field
   
3. Under 'Popular with Award Force users' click Create new Award Force users and entries from new/updated Google Sheets rows
   
   
4. Log in to your Zapier account
5. Select your Google Sheets account
   
6. Continue
7. In the 'Set up trigger' area, select your drive, the spreadsheet containing your entries, the worksheet within that spreadsheet with your entries present, and the trigger column 
   
   Tip: we recommend setting this to any_column so that any change reflected in the spreadsheet will update your Award Force account.
8. Continue
9. Test your trigger using the button provided by Zapier 
   
10. Once Zapier finds a spreadsheet row, click Continue
11. In the 'Action Event' step, choose Create Entry
    
    
12. Continue
13. When prompted, click Sign in to Award Force
14. Provide the API key that you generated in Step 2 
15. Continue
16. Once rerouted back to Zapier, click Continue
17. Select your program's chapter, category, and season from the corresponding drop-downs
18. In the Entrant drop-down, choose the entrant slug column from your spreadsheet
    
19. In the Title drop-down, choose the title or entry name column from your spreadsheet
    
20. Select your desired entry fields from the drop-down
21. Continue
22. Test your automation by clicking Test & Continue
    
    
23. When ready, turn on your Zap using the small toggle at the bottom of the page

Step 4: importing your entries

When you're ready to import your entries into your Award Force account, follow these steps:

1. Log into your Zapier account
2. Navigate to the Zaps page in the navigation 
3. In your list of Zaps, toggle on the Award Force integration 
4. Open the drop-down and select Run Zap 
   
5. Once the data has loaded from Google Sheets, click the Select All followed by Send data to Zap
   

If you need to upload additional files then you can add more steps to the Zapier template, selecting the Award Force app, and then Upload Entry File for the Action Event where outlined in step 11 from the previous section.

Upload single file upload fields and attachments

To upload files to Award Force the data must be in base64 format. This next step will convert a file URL to base64 for you and this can then be inserted into the Award Force database. You will need to add the Code by Zapier app as the next step. 

Select Run Javascript and click Continue. For the input data select the file URL from the spreadsheet.

Then paste in this code:

const response = await fetch(inputData.url);
const content = await response.buffer();
const data = content.toString("base64");
output = [{ data }];