Orbit Batch/Bulk Data Import

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Allows batch-import of data into the orbit.love platform. This is an unofficial community submission to support other Orbit users.

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Initial Setup

  • Add your auth details in the auth table. You may add test credentials and pick when running the included script which workspace to ingest data to.
  • Create values in activity_type

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Preparing Data

  • first_name & last_name OR full_name - required. If full_name is present it takes precedence.
  • email, github, twitter - these are used to create/update existing members in Orbit. None are required, but we get better profiles & less duplication of members if you can provide more.
  • location, company, pronouns - optional
  • tags_to_add - optional, a comma-separated list (no spaces) of tags to add to the member.
  • activity_type - required, this is a key Orbit concept - every activity has a type. We can create new activities, but this is a single select field to encourage consistency.
  • title - required, shown on the activity card in Orbit.
  • description - optional, provide more detail about the activity.
  • link_url, link_text - both optional, and add a link in the activity - if you provide one you need to provide both. link_text is what is shown as the clickable link.
  • occurred_at - optional, if left blank will default to today.
  • imported - do not edit, the importer will check this when the item has been imported.

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Avoiding duplicates

Orbit allows us to pass a unique key with each activity - if it receives data with the same key then it will not be imported to avoid duplicates. We use the Airtable-generated key to ensure this value is unique.

When creating new records, you should delete existing records and insert new data in brand new records, otherwise the old key will persist. If this is not done, the data will not be imported.

Once an activity is imported, the imported field will become checked. This means it will be ignored on future runs.

Rate limiting

To respect Orbit rate limits, the importer will only process the first 120 unimported items per run. Please wait one minute between runs should you have more than this. The importer will tell you if this is the case.

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Updated March 10, 2021 at 10:46 AM
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Kevin Lewis

Developer Advocate at Vonage, Lead Organizer of You Got This Conferences.
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