Preparing Your Files

This section looks at how to prepare your files for Totara. The preparation of files is important to ensure quality data in your Totara system.

Recommendation is you use one master user file, with new users being added to the master file and users no longer with the organisation being removed from the master file. A master file present less risk than working with partial files.

User file format

The following table contains the standard Totara fields included as part of a HR import. It is possible to set up site specific user fields and include these in the HR Import, this is discussed in the Custom user profile section.

Mandatory Fields

Heading	Format	Notes
idnumber	1-100 characters	Unique reference for each user. This reference must not change, or be reused by a different user.
username	1-100 characters	Unique name for each user. This is used by users when they login.
timemodified	Unix tmestamps	This column must appear in the CSV, but can be left blank.
deleted	0=Do not delete 1=Delete	This field does not need to be included if your file always contains all records.
suspended	0=	This field does not need to be included if your file always contains all records.
firstname	1-100 characters
lastname	1-100 characters
email	Valid email address (Maximum 100 characters)
emailstop	0=Disable 1=Enable	Disables non-essential system generated email notifications. Note this does not affect the "Welcome" new user/Revived user email.
country
city	120 charcters

Optional fields

Heading	Format	Notes
timezone	1-100 characters	A location-based timezone identifier e.g. America/New_York, Europe/London, Asia/Singapore etc. See PHP timezones for more information
lang	1-30 characters	2 char ISO 639-1 code See ISO language codes for more information
description	1-1000 characters
url	1-200 characters
institution	1-40 characters
department	1-30 characters
phone1	1-20 characters
phone2	1-20 characters
address	1-70 characters
password	1-32 characters
orgidnumber	1-100 characters	Matches a valid organisation idnumber in the organisation hierarchy.
postitle	Up to 100 characters, including space, ampersand, parentheses, forward slash	Primary position title
posidnumber	1-100 characters	Matches valid position idnumber in the position hierarchy.
manageridnumber	1-100 characters	Matches valid user idnumber in user file
customfield_[shortname]	1-1000 characters	Custom field data. Multiple columns allowed, where the column heading matches an existing user custom field shortname.

Tips for preparing your files

• Colum headers must all be lowercase
• Colum headers must have no spaces
  • Underscore is used for customfield_[shortname]
• Leave fields blank if there is not information, rather than using N/A or NULL