Contact Upload allows you to quickly and easily add your contacts to Echo as well as allowing you to organise contacts into logical groups. Uploading via Echo couldn’t be simpler with our handy wizard to walk you through the process step by step.

Preparing your spreadsheet

Your spreadsheet should ideally contain at least three columns:

• First Name
• Last Name
• Recipient Number.

If you want to choose the Quickname assigned to a contact, or put them in different group you can add extra columns to your data.

When adding your numbers, these must be formatted as numbers (as opposed to text) and must not contain any spaces. You can format your numbers with or without the leading zero or preceded by the country code, but it is advisable to choose one of these formats and apply it to all numbers.

You can also specify which groups you want your contacts to be added to within the spreadsheet.

To do this, create a new column and enter the name of the group you want the contact to be a member of. This group can either be an existing one on the account or it can be a completely new one.

If you want to add a contact to multiple groups, separate the groups with the tildé character (~).

Upload your File

Step 1 – The Upload

Within Echo, navigate to Contacts & Groups >> Upload contacts where you will find an option to upload your file of contacts. Simply click ‘Choose File’ and locate the file on your computer. Once you have selected this, click ‘Upload File’.

Step 2 – Column Selection

There are four pieces of information to specify here. Select the corresponding column number in your spreadsheet for the Phone Number, First Name and Last Name.

If you leave the Quickname field blank, this will be automatically generated as a combination of the first and last name of a given contact, which may result in duplicate Quicknames e.g. “Andrew Smith”.

Note: If you do not specify name details for your contacts, a quickname will be automatically generated which is the letter C (for Contact) followed by the recipient number. For ease of contact management and searching, we would advise to add a recognisable contact name wherever possible.

Step 3 – Preview your Data

This section gives you a chance to check and review the information before completing the upload. Echo will also strip out any invalid contact information at this point, including duplicated data within the file itself, and alert you to any information which will not be uploaded.

You will also have the opportunity to add the contacts to a pre-existing group (see group creation for more details on setting these up) by simply typing the name of the group into the input box below your contact information. You can add contacts to multiple groups at the same time which makes this process even more efficient for managing your contacts.

Step 4 – Completion

After clicking the Create Contacts button, you will receive a message providing details of the number of successfully uploaded contacts. From here, you can either view or send a message to your newly uploaded contacts.

Should your file contain any contact data that already exists on the account, e.g. a contact with the same quickname or phone number of an existing contact, you will be able to download a file containing the contacts that did not upload. Simply edit the information for these contacts and upload them again.