Introduction
In many cases, you may find it necessary to import large numbers of athletes and teams into CT Live. This can be done with our Import Athletes tool. You may also use the Import Athletes tool to make corrections to large numbers of athletes/teams. This section will walk you through how to import new athletes and teams and make edits to existing ones.
Fields Required for Import
The basic columns required for an initial athlete import are External ID, First Name, Last Name, and Registration Choice. Additional suggested fields would be Age and Gender. Age can be imported as a manual "race age" or by importing Date of Birth.
Note: Registration Choice may align with the "Race" column as exported from other registration platforms. External ID needs to be the unique identifier for an athlete coming out of the registration platform.
Teams
If you wish to import teams using the same file as athletes that is possible in this new importer. To do so, beside each athlete you wish to create you will need to add the team external id as well as team name. Be sure there are no typos in team external id, as that may create a new team if that id # changes. Relay Bib can also be imported within the same file as the athlete. To do so you will need to map the relay team bib to the field of the same name in our system.
Toggling Team Type
If the importer detects teams are being imported, it will ask you to define the type of teams to be imported.
Importing Athletes and Teams
- Click on the "Import Athletes" page, located in the side Menu of the Athlete tab in CT Live 2.0
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Select an import file from your computer to upload.
Tip: Import files MUST be .csv, or .tsv format. Athletes must also have a unique External ID that never changes in order to properly update existing athletes. The External ID should NEVER be the bib number. - Once the file is loaded into the importer, hit next.
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In the next section, you must map the various columns in your file to their corresponding features in CT Live. CT Live will attempt to automatically detect which columns belong to which setting, but it may be necessary to manually specify. As you can see in the image below, the ID line was not mapped to any CT Live setting. This is because the heading was too ambiguous. ID might refer to an External ID, Team External ID, or a Chrono ID. The default setting for ambiguous lines is Ignore, meaning that the column will not be used when importing the athletes.
- To select the corresponding value, click the dropdown next to the desired ChronoTrack Column heading, and scroll to select the correct data attribute. Headings are organized alphabetically with Custom Questions at the bottom of the list.
- Check each column to make sure they are being mapped correctly. If necessary, select the Ignore bubble to eliminate a column from being uploaded.
- (Optional) If you wish to import athletes and teams together in one import, you will need to add the additional fields to your file of external team id, and team name. Doing this will create the team additionally upon import. For more information on team imports, go here.
- Click next again and you will choose a corresponding selection for birthdate format, gender, and race.
- Finally, you will land on a data validation page. This page will tell you how many athletes/teams will be created in addition to how many will be updated. Click Start Import Job to begin the upload.
- Once you start the import job, you will be redirected to the Jobs page which will give you additional progress information on your import in addition to information on failures if applicable. For more information go our article on Jobs HERE.
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If you encounter upload errors or issues that are not self-explanatory, please reach out to CT Support for assistance.
Error Handling
Errors that occur after you have started an import job will display on the Event - Jobs page within the corresponding import job. If an error occurs before you get to the step to start the import it will be displayed at the bottom of the page. Errors, such as missing registration choice, will not allow you to continue until the error is resolved. If you are expecting Teams to be imported and the required columns are not met, you will see that at the bottom of the map page.
Importing Tags
To keep tag maps in sync in CT Live, Tags are no longer able to be imported using the Import Athletes tool. To import tags into an event, you will need to do 2 things.
1. Turn off bib/tag matching in CT Live under Pickup- Bib/Tag Settings.
2. Import a bib-tag map into our system following the steps laid out in this article: How to Offset Bibs and Tags in CT Live
Subsequent Imports
For subsequent imports, your header mapping and general mapping for the different fields such as race will be saved. To choose this mapping that you did for a previous import, simply choose it after uploading your file into the importer.