Import Contact Information : BestNotes Support

**Please keep in mind, there is a charge for imports. For more information on pricing, please visit: https://www.bestnotes.com/pricing/**

Collecting Contact Information

When importing contact information, you can use the spreadsheet attached below as a guide to gather the necessary information for the import..

When putting this information together, there are some key items that you will need to keep in mind.

All of the column names MUST stay the same. This includes everything within Row 1.
By default, the contacts listed on each line will pull in as “Clients” and any contacts listed within the related contacts (i.e. R1_FNAME, R1_LNAME) will pull in as “Individuals”.
If there is no information in a column, it can be deleted (i.e. if you do not want to assign a fixed tag on import, you can remove the FIXED_TAG1 column)
We can set the import to pull every contact in as a new contact, or we can set it to update existing contacts if there is a match on First name, Last name and DOB. By default the import will update any existing and matched records

Translation of Information Collected

ACCESS_TAG1	If you want to have an access tag assigned to the contact, indicate that here. If you have more than 1 access tag, add a column and increase the tag # (i.e. ACCESS_TAG2). If you do not want to indicate this in the import, we can automatically assign a generic access tag such as "Import" so these contacts can be easily found and edited after they are in BestNotes
FIXED_TAG1	Fixed tag to be assigned on import
ALTID	Any custom business unique identifier for a contact
Other Demographic Fields	Many demographic fields are next, and should be self-explanatory.
EDOA	Estimated Date of Admit (Start Date)
DOA	Actual Date of Admit (Start Date)
EDOD	Estimated Date of Discharge (End Date)
DOD	Actual Date of Discharge (End Date)
PROVIDER(2)(3)(4)	the userid of an existing BestNotes user
Phone Numbers	The following formats can be accepted: (208) 555-1234, 208-555-1234, and 2085551234
R1_RELATIONSHIP	1st related contact, the text of the relationship to the client (i.e. if R1_X is the contacts Mother, "Mother" would go here)

The following columns will indicate the relationship of the related contact:

R1_REFERRER
R1_REFEROUT
R1_EMERGENCY
R1_PARENT
R1_CUSTODY
R1_INFORELEASE
R1_GUARANTOR
R1_SUBSCRIBER

To select the relationship of the related contact, enter a “1” to check the box and a “0” to uncheck a box. For example, if you input a “1” below “R1_PARENT” that contacts relationship will appear as “Parent/Guardian” (see Figure 1-1)

Figure 1-1. Contact relationship.

If you need to import information that will populate into an existing Data Form, you can achieve this by gathering the Field Number: F_###. The field number can be found in BestNotes by navigating to Settings, then to Data Forms (see Figure 1-2). You will then need to add a new column header within the spreadsheet. The title of this header would be the field number indicated above “F_###”, and anything listed within that column will import into that field. For example, if the field that you would like to import is the field listed in Figure 1-2, for your column header you would insert: “F_11445”. You can add as many Data Form fields as you would like by adding a new column for each field to be imported.

Figure 1-2. Finding the Data Form field id.

To add any Blank Notes to you contact, you will simply add the date of the note, the author of the note, the blank note type, and the content of the note within the NOTE_fields.

Submitting Your Import Spreadsheet

We accept most spreadsheet files saved as .csv, .odf, .ods, and .xls. If the file is less than 5MB, please save it to the documents area in your BestNotes, and let our support team know that it is ready by emailing team@bestnotes.com. If you file is larger than 5 MB please reach out to our staff via email at team@bestnotes.com when it is ready and we will walk you through a HIPAA compliant manner of sending that information to us.