Bulk importing custom object records

What's my plan?

All Suites | Team, Growth, Professional, Enterprise, or Enterprise Plus

Support | Enterprise

Rather than adding custom object records one at a time, you can bulk-add and update many records at once by importing a CSV (comma-separated values) file. You must be an administrator to bulk import custom object records.

This article contains the following topics:

Requirements and limitations

Creating custom object records CSV file

Importing the custom object records CSV file

Requirements and limitations

The following limitations of bulk importing apply:

The import CSV file can't exceed 1 GB in size. We recommend a maximum of 500,000 rows. That is one header row and up to 499,999 rows of data. Furthermore, each row can't exceed 32 KB in size.

The import CSV file can contain a maximum of 102 columns.

Don't include the same record more than once within a CSV file. Doing so can cause your import to fail.

There's no guarantee that records are created or updated in the order they appear in the CSV file.

You can only import one CSV file at a time. Therefore, if you have more data than the maximum number of rows supported for the CSV file, you must create separate files for each batch and import them one after another.

Bulk importing custom object records can't be undone. Before importing the CSV file that contains the information of all your current records, test that same CSV file with a single record to make sure the upload works as intended.

Creating custom object records CSV file

To bulk import custom object records, you will use a CSV file. Here are some important things to keep in mind when creating your file:

The file must be properly formatted CSV and saved using UTF-8 character encoding.

The first row of the CSV file is the header row.

The header row must contain a name field. Optionally, if you wish to bulk update the records in the future, you must also include an external_id field. All other field names in the header row should be exact matches to the field keys in your custom object.

To import values for dropdown fields, use the custom dropdown field's field_key as the column heading and specify the options tag, not the user-friendly value.

To import values for lookup relationship fields, use the custom lookup relationship field's field_key as the column heading and provide either the record's id or external id. If you use the record's ID, provide the value. If you use the External ID, use the format external_id:value, where value is replaced with the related record's external ID value.

If you are not importing data for a field, do not list it in the header row.

Add line breaks to notes or multiline custom fields by pressing ALT+ENTER on Windows or CTRL+OPTION+RETURN on macOS.

If you are performing a bulk upload of records to seed your existing data for a new custom object, we recommend that you walk through Planning your custom objects workflow. During the process, we recommend creating spreadsheets with this data for each of your custom objects. If structured carefully to align with the custom object you created in Zendesk and the guidelines above, you can export the spreadsheet as a CSV file and use it for this bulk upload. In this case, make sure to add a column for the external_id and add an ID for each record if you want the option of bulk updating them in the future.

Importing the custom object records CSV file

You can use the data importer to import a CSV file that creates new custom object records or updates existing records and capture logs of all attempted imports through the Data importer page.

To create or update custom object records with the data importer

Before you can bulk upload records for a custom object, you must create the custom object in Zendesk.

In Admin Center, click Objects and rules in the sidebar, then select Tools > Data importer.

Click Import.

Under Import type, choose one of the following:

Create only: Only new custom object records are created. Any data in the CSV file pertaining to existing records is ignored.

Update only: Replace data for the existing custom object records listed in your CSV file. Any data pertaining to new records is ignored.

Create and update: Create new custom object records and update data for the existing custom object records listed in your CSV file.

Under Target destination, select the custom object's name.

Under File upload, drag and drop your file or click to upload and select your CSV file from the file browser.
If you need to change the file you've selected, click the delete icon ( ) next to the file name.

Click Next.

Review the Field mapping list.

If the field mapping is correct, click Next.

If the field mapping isn't correct, click Back. Edit your CSV file to adhere to the format requirements, and then re-upload the file.

Review the summary of import details in the confirmation dialog and then click Start import.
After the import starts, the imported changes can't be reverted. To check the status of an import, check your import history.