Importing is the process of collecting external data and bringing it in to Medallia Experience Cloud.

Auto Importer is the Medallia Experience Cloud service that ingests data from almost any source or format, validates and transforms it into formats Experience Cloud expects, and then uses it to power surveys, hierarchies, users, and reporting — without requiring the source system to match Medallia's schema. When the process is finished, reports detail the import results.

Once configured, each import process usually runs automatically, either on a schedule or when triggered by some event, such as as transactions or respondent touchpoints.

The most commonly imported data are survey, Org hierarchy segments, Units, and User information. After importing survey data, the import process triggers Sampling to create Survey emails.

Import topics

• Feeds receive or collect data from the external, company source, and then pass the data to a designated Processors or Preprocessors. Feeds include:

  • FTP Feeds and SFTP Feeds receive files from the company using file transfer protocol (FTP).

  • Email Feeds receive data in emails sent to Experience Cloud. The data can be in the body, included as an attachment, or both.

  • Feed Pulls retrieve the data from company's server using FTP.

  • Web Feeds use HTTP to retrieve the file from a company's server.

• Auto Importer Processors import company-supplied data-feed files into records in Experience Cloud databases. The most commonly used processors import survey, org hierarchy segments, and account information into the Survey, Unit, and User databases.

  • Auto Importer UI is a form-based interface to guide you as you build an import specification. It provides instant error messaging and real-time previews, and it builds the underlying XML specifications, eliminating the need to write XML from scratch.

  • Auto Importer Preprocessors prepare feed-files for Auto Importer Processors by transforming the contents into a format the processor can read. Preprocessors are optional and only used when the data need to be converted into a format the Processor can interpret.

  • Lookup tables map data values to some key or ID. When a feed contains the key or ID, importing can retrieve the values from a lookup table, and insert the value — instead of the key — into the database.

• Feed Files is a screen for tracking, managing, and reporting on each imported feed-file.

• Import Processing Reports detail the import processing results.

• Self Service Uploads are templates that identify import specifications available to Admin Suite users.